Artie Shaw

I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem…

— Artie Shaw

It ["Begin the Beguine"] became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first…

— Artie Shaw

An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.

— Artie Shaw

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper... a windshield wiper that's fairly steady gives you a beat…

— Artie Shaw

I'm not conditioned to be an entertainer. An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself. The problem with…

— Artie Shaw

Shoot for the moon - if you miss you'll end up in the stars.

— Artie Shaw

There's such a cynicism about the phrase 'I laughed all the way to the bank.' It's as though money is what you're…

— Artie Shaw

“Presumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.”

— Artie Shaw

People ask what those women saw in me. Let's face it, I wasn't a bad-looking stud. But that's not it. It's the…

— Artie Shaw

When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the…

— Artie Shaw

Any more would have been less.

— Artie Shaw

If I could have done anything more, it would have been less

— Artie Shaw

The bandleader is a musician trying to sell a mass commodity; and in order to do so successfully he must accommodate himself…

— Artie Shaw

You have no idea of the people I didn't marry.

— Artie Shaw

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

— Artie Shaw

I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out…

— Artie Shaw

The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to…

— Artie Shaw

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

— Artie Shaw

I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz…

— Artie Shaw

Essentially, the popular musician in America must learn that his basic job is to entertain people, to make them forget their sorrows…

— Artie Shaw

Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

— Artie Shaw

If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.

— Artie Shaw

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

— Artie Shaw

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.

— Artie Shaw

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

— Artie Shaw