Quotes By Wynton Marsalis

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.