Quotes from Wynton Marsalis

There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.

Many a revolution started with the actions of a few. Only 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. A few hanging together can lead a nation to change.

There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play, but I couldn't.

If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.

The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.

Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you 'sell' only to people of a certain age, you get cut off from the main body of experience.

The nerves are a problem on trumpet, because when you mess up everyone can hear it. Just remember most people are too polite to say anything about it. That should calm your nerves.

Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.

I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.

My daddy thought - no, he expected - that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He was correct in his belief because he had lived in an America of continual social progress, depression followed by prosperity, segregation by integration, and so on.

My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.

I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.

I grew up in the South, and our way of dealing with each other was teasing, ribbing, making fun and scrapping in the street. Criticism doesn't bother me so much. It actually made me, when I was younger, more aggressive. But you get into middle age, and you lose interest in that stuff. It's not serious.

I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad.

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged us to study and enjoy many different types of music.