Quotes By Wynton Marsalis

I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.

I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?

Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.

Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The bandstand is a sacred place.

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.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

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.

We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.

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.

What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.

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.

People have taken time out of their day and spent their money to come sit down at a concert. And it's jazz music-it's not easy for them to get to it. I don't want them ever to feel that I'm taking their presence lightly.

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

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.

There are forces all around you who wish to exploit division, rob you of your freedom, and tell you what to think. But young folks can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation.

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

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

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.