People From New York City

"[The] kind of thinking [...] which refuses to make distinctions among artists on the basis of color or nationality or gender, which insists on inclusion rather than exclusion, is hardly fashionable with the current tribalism known as multiculturalism and cultural diversity. But it represents [...] the only kind of thinking that can prepare the way for great art, and builds the path to a reconciled society."

"The more you get into material and matter, all you realize is in matter, there is energy. There is a blur between energy and consciousness. All material is conscious to some extent or another. All material can respond to some extent or another to vibrations of energy that is different to energy you learn about in physics. There are all sorts of reliable information now on people and animal being able to be able to effect the operations of machines—even of computers—and I think that has great implications for what goes on between a musician and his instrument. There is a level of reality where there is no time, and there is no space, there is just energy. And we have contact with that through the intermediate layers, so, if the right channels—if the right connections are established, I don’t see why a piece of matter, a piece of broken glass or and old record can’t make contact through this very high level of reality that has access to everything past and future. I suppose my instruments do retain some sort of memory of me. I know that when I’m working on them I feel (not explicitly, I don’t hear voices in my head or anything) that I’m making a connection with it. The circuit diagram, that is then converted into a circuit board, which then becomes a part of an instrument is something that is a record that I made. So I guess in that sense it is something that is certainly a memory."

"I try to really understand every aspect of the most high; for me, the most high is Allah... I live my life by Islam."

"Fuck that! Look at shorty, she a little cutie yo (yeah) The way she shake it make me wanna get all in the booty yo (whoo!) Top miss, just hit the bangin' bitches in videos (huh?)"

"We tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can do in the long term."

"Training, as practiced in much of corporate America, is an astonishing waste of resources."

"Sometimes it's just not practical to go through the effort of creating a new solution when an existing solution will do the job almost as well."

"Often the true causes of our discomfort are so integral to our environment that we fail to recognize them."

"As in any discipline, to become good you need first to learn the rules. To become great, you need to break them."

"We think the more detailed and exhaustive our plans, the more likely the future will actually mirror our vision. But it rarely even comes close."

"In the heat of the moment, it can be all too easy to generate solutions that take on a life of their own, without reference to the core values of the people developing them or those expected to implement them."

"Ideas are mutable. They are always capable of growing. Each time we look at them, we can see something new. We just need to give ourselves permission to do so."

"Preliminary ideas are often weak and impure, and need to be driven through a forge in order to become powerful, workable solutions."

"Even though you may have started out saying you wanted imaginative, novel ideas, the tendency to drift back into the conventional is powerful."

"If you let it, your mind will celebrate new stimuli by automatically making dozens of unexpected connections for you. If you pay attention to them, you may discover the answer you've been looking for."

"The only dumb idea is, quite literally, the one that is unspoken."

"When you try to generate ideas, think of yourself as a sales person knocking on a whole subdivision of doors. Some won't open at all, some will open a suspicious crack, and some will slam in your face. But the more doors you knock on, the greater your chances of being invited in."

"In my experience one of the most common causes for programs, products, and change initiatives that don't work is that the wrong question has been asked."

"As soon as you establish concrete intention, you begin to notice all kinds of things in your world that relate to that intention. Ideas and opportunities seem to appear from nowhere, almost as though by magic."

"Giving ourselves permission to imagine allows us to access a huge resource of cognitive capacity that we often ignore."

"Unless a potential future incorporates a powerful emotional pull, it will have great difficulty overcoming the gravitational pull of the past."

"No matter how dysfunctional the present, no matter how sensible the reasons for change, most people and organizations would rather wring out the old than ring in the new."

"But as important as it is to see what's going on, it's unlikely that merely understanding the situation will do much to improve it. If you're interested in change, you need to develop a sense of possibility."

"One of the major barriers to productive thinking is the almost compulsive drive in most business organizations to be right."

"If things weren't messy, or getting messy, there would be no discontent, and you wouldn't need productive thinking in the first place."

"You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw — Ava Gardner — and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature."

"It became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat."

"My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay."

"He's a meticulously hard worker and yet he'll roam the grass of his farm for hours and sometimes for days before he can bring himself to put a word on paper."

"If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught."

"I hand him a lyric and get out of his way."

"It's the new management's job to look at the world as it changes, and how do we look at change and take advantage of change, rather than put our head in the ground."

"I beg your pardon. My husband wrote "Ol' Man River." Jerome Kern wrote "da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da.""

"There's a place for us, Somewhere a place for us Peace and quiet and open air wait for us, Somewhere. There's a time for us, Some day a time for us Time together with time to spare, time to look, time to care, Someday. Somewhere we'll find a new way of living. We'll find a way of forgiving, Somewhere.'"

"Without question, Steve is the best Broadway lyricist, past or present."

"Plays also, but musicals particularly—the last collaborator is your audience. So you got to wait until the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. And things that seem to work well, work in the sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece, suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional, or a little overlong, or a little overweight, or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping in front of an audience."

"I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it."

"They are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons."

"It certainly will be if you are still around."

"There is no better way to spend an evening than listening to George Gershwin at the piano. Fortunately for his audience, he seldom was away from it. He played his own tunes to Ira's special lyrics and though his voice was pure gravel it was special entertainment."

"While the doctors were sawing away at Ira's midriff, I submitted a variety of ideas to George. One of the most successful was the title of the best song in the show, "Someone to Watch Over Me." I wrote and was credited with two songs: "Oh, Kay" and "Heaven On Earth." I wrote the verse for the spiritual number "Clap Yo' Hands" and a lyric called "That Certain Something You've Got," but Ira changed the lyrics and called it "Oh, Kay, You're O.K. with Me." It was the title song of the show and the least distinguished. Ira made me a present of the credit for it. It was the opposite of plagiarism; we call it donorism. George, realizing that any sum he paid me would have to come out of Ira's royalties, paid me next to nothing. It was decided that I was to get 1¢ for every copy of sheet music that was sold. When Ira sent me my first paycheck it was for 96¢. Some time shortly thereafter, Ira wrote asking if I minded canceling the arrangement which involved a lot of bookkeeping for such small sums. I said no, I didn't mind. I was proud to work with the great Gershwin. I would've done it for nothing, which I did."

"I like to think of music as an emotional science."

"An entire composition written in jazz could not live."

"When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America."

"A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation."

"Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas."

"Modern European composers ... have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical technique which has helped them put into musical terms a little more clearly the thoughts that originated here. They can express themselves more glibly."

"Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music."

"The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself…Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel."

"My people are American, my time is today…music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times."