If you're committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.
My real name's McGill. The Jew thing I just do for the homeboys. They all want a pipe-hitting member of the tribe, so to speak.
If I could put my finger on it, I'd bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it - the climate, the smells. It's the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there's an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here.
We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.
The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.
Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe and aren't even aware of.
After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.
In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
Some people are immune to good advice.
It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.
Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.
John Goodman is more that just a big guy, he's a wonderful actor.
My my Laura Goodman. I must say that is a charming name for a charming young lady." "Eric's old." I broke in. "Really really old." "Er— really?" Laura asked. "Gosh you don't look even out of your thirties." "Tons of face-lifts. He's a surgical addict. I'm trying to get him help." I added defensively when they both gave me strange looks.
[Luke, holding stormtrooper helmet.] Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not,/ yet have I taken both uniform and life/ From thee. What manner of a man wert thou?/ A man of inf'nite jest or cruelty?/ A man with helpmate and with children too?/ A man who hath his Empire serv'd with pride?/ A man, perhaps, who wish'd for perfect peace?/ What'er thou wert, goodman, thy pardon grant/ Unto the one who took thy place: e'en me.
The proper word for me," Robin Goodman says, "is me.
These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.
Above all else, [Benny Goodman] was a great player, one of the greatest American music has produced. He brought his absolute talent and his invincible love of music to the fore every time he played. There are many other things connected to society and ethnicity that are often mentioned in a discussion of Benny Goodman but all of them are connected to his overwhelming affection for the art of the music and the fairness it should be allowed to express.
Any page by Paul Goodman will give you not only originality and brilliance but wisdom, that is, something to think about. He is our peculiar, urban, twentieth-century Thoreau, the quintessential American mind of our time.
We had spent a lot of time in London [with Lucas Goodman], which has been amazing, but also it was kind of a homecoming and we felt so surrounded by a specific community of people who are just so New York, so unapologetically themselves and so creative.
or simply: