The qualities in music which I considered most important – and still do – were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.
I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.
Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.
I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.
I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.
Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.
Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it’s really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.
Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.
I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.
We’re working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.
Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over new York City, and somebody says, ‘Let’s call Desmond,’ and somebody else says, ‘Why bother? He’s probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.’