But I would be naive not to recognize the number of musicians who tell me they have been influenced by me and sight me - as well as Alex and Neil - as a musician who has been a positive influence on their playing.

I'm not really one of those people who believes that if you're a musician you can just leave that behind and start getting into politics.

Publishing the lyric books poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

Those little nimble musicians of the air that warble forth their curious ditties with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

Comedy is like music and the way to make the best music is to have skilled musicians in your band.

Put you energy into music. If it fails you you can become an accountant or a dentist. And then if you become a dentist or an accountant it's too late to become a musician afterwards.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.