“Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet.”

If you join the rat race — you’re in the race of rats.

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it’s all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It’s the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.

Who struggles can fail. Who doesn’t struggle has already failed!

Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, provided he loves peace, is a greater lover of the arts than any so-called art-lover who loves the arts of war.

Temptation to behave is terrible.

Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.

It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality.

Poverty makes you wise but it’s a curse.

What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

The mobilization order is already written out. Every day, to earn my daily bread I go to the market where lies are bought Hopefully I take up my place among the sellers.

You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

If you wan to steal money, don’t rob a bank – open one.

Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.

General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.

I always like to think I build in historically accurate musical in-jokes that are so precise that like maybe there’s 7 or 8 people in the world watching the show that will sit up and go, “Oh my God the music being played is the right kind of music!”

Did ole Hank really do it this way?

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.

Jazz vision is a wordless conversation between musical notes and visual expressions.

Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.

I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.

Everybody on our cast is very musically talented, except for me.

I’ve been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!