“If my name were Nubby Blues, I wouldn't be a jazz musician, I'd be a disabled Vietnam vet on welfare.”

“Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.”

“So, Beav, tell me about yourself.""I'm Blue.""Sweetheart, if I had your dubious taste in men, I wouldn't be too happy, either.""My name is Blue. Blue Bailey.”

“I was a wise-a** college student of twenty at the time and a precocious musician, with somewhat of that screw-you-I'm-a-jazz-player attitude.”

“Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.”

“CIA Interrogator:Have you ever met any jazz musicians you would describe, or who would describe themselves, as anarchists?Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair:Hmmm... ah, there was a trombone player, Wilfred Baker.Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair:He's the only jazz musician I can think of who is completely devoid of anarchist tendencies.”