Quotes from Wynton Marsalis

Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.

My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.

Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.

I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.

The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.

You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.

There really have only ever been a few people in each generation who step out, are willing to put themselves on the line, and risk everything for their beliefs.

Thank the good Lord for a job.

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.

What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.

My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something; it gives me an added edge.

it ain't as hard as picking cotton

Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.

This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.

It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.

I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.

Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.

I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn't really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

Ethics are more important than laws.

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.