“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.”

“What is my definition of jazz? 'Safe sex of the highest order.”

“And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order.”

“Future civilizations - better civilizations than this one - are going to judge all men by the extent to which they've been artists. You and I, if some future archaeologist finds our works miraculously preserved in some city dump, will be judged by the quality of our creations. Nothing else about us will matter.”

“There's no question about it. The arts are an extremely high-risk situation. People are willing to take these extraordinary chances to become writers, musicians or painters, and because of them we have a culture. If this ever stops, our culture will die, because most of our culture, in fact, has been created by people that got paid nothing for it-- People like Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent van Gogh or Mozart. So, yes, it's a very foolish thing to do, notoriously foolish, but it seems human to attempt it anyway.”

“The painter's face curdled with scorn "You think I'm proud of this daub?" he said. "You think this is my idea of what life looks like?""What's your idea of what life looks like?" said the orderly. The painter gestured at a foul dropcloth. "There's a good picture of it," he said. "Frame that, and you'll have a picture a damn sight more honest than this one.”

“Is there nothing I have done which will outlive me, other than the opprobrium of my first wife and sons and grandchildren?Do I care?Doesn't everybody?Poor me. Poor practically everybody, with so little durable good to leave behind!”