Artie Shaw

“All I can say is I've been reading the scores of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, and they are my gods.”

“They thought I was a success, but I felt like a failure.”

“I wanted to quit, but I was caught in a trap. I had to go on.”

“Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.”

“A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past.”

“I could never understand why I was awarded this medal. All I did was stand up and play the horn.”

“You have no idea of the kind of pressure I was under. I was a personality.”

“The band business is a terrible life. You're never really your own man.”

“You can't get a good crew going unless you're your own boss.”

“The public is a great beast.”

“I'm not an entertainer. I'm a musician.”

“Jazz was born in a whiskey barrel, grew up on marijuana and is about to expire on heroin.”

“I think the clarinet is a sissy instrument.”

“To the audience, this was a glorious, glamorous job. But to me, it was a terrible, terrible job.”

“I did not want to be a dancing monkey for the public.”