“Are you stalking me, Mr. Fulton?” The idea both amused and horrified Jazz.”

This is why I forgive, but I don’t forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn’t mean anything anymore.

What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?…The term was faith.

You can’t rely on love. Love will let you down every time. Every. Single. Time. I don’t love Jecca. I don’t love Fanboy. But… God, the buts in life will kill you absolutely every time, won’t they. I don’t love. But I need. I can admit that to myself.

Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.

I suddenly realize that I’m naked, which shouldn’t bother me since it’s the phone, but for some reason it does. “How’s it hanging?” Kyra asks and now I think I’m blushing. It’s just an expression, but jeez!

…She’s not buying [the lie], but there’s nothing else on the shelves.

See, forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not an event – it’s a process.

And it’s true. It’s so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve… I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask. But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.

. . . but there’s a restraining order in place.’ She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. ‘I’m not supposed to be this close to you.’ You were never supposed to be this close to me,’ I say, and I have no idea why.

What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster?

(Man, I wish life had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock) Anyway.

And I think of nothing. I think of nothing but Rachel. What happens next is pure magic, and is for us and us alone.

He moved to run a hand through her cornrows, then pulled back remembering the one time he’s tried that-Connie had lectured him on the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not touch thy black girlfriend’s hair. Ever.

And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we’re us.

At the end of the day, it’s a series of individual challenges played out against a team defense. It’s a psersonal test every time I step into the batter’s box: Can I do better than the last time? And that’s why I love it.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n’ roll – that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

That the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another themeM

I’ve been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

Jazz brought this sense of democracy where four guys come together and your name may be on the marquee, but in this moment, when you’re the soloist, it’s you, and we follow you. We follow you.

You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues.

Once you discover that you can, then you must.

Tom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated.