Wynton Marsalis Quotes

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colorful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.

My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.

Our mother was a very religious and observant Jew, our father less so. She was kind of driving the religious education, so for us it was more a burden and an obligation when we were kids at that age.

My father had very little formal education.

My mother is a special education teacher but also an artist, and my father an advertising executive. They are about as wacky as you can get without being alcoholics.

My father was a professor of folklore, and my mother was a teacher until she was married. I had a good relationship with them, and the only argument we had was when I went to university and wanted to go into the theater instead of studying to be a lawyer.

My own parents were very un-neurotic, so I never thought that I had to change enormously in order to become a parent.

My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and compulsively.

I think naturally my orientation is from my father.

And we're fortunate if we have parents who are great and loving and inspiring. But, unfortunately, there are people who don't have that.

My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

I was a momma's boy. I didn't get anything from Dad, except my body and baseball knowledge. The only time I spent with him was at the ballpark.

No, I got a GED in my 30s. My kids know that I never stop learning, and they know I love reading. I have books overflowing everywhere. I am current on today's events and I read the paper every day, and we talk about it, so they see that appetite.

If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.

Both of my parents graduated from high school, both attended college, both have government jobs now. They've always been very adamant about me finishing high school and finishing college.

I suppose that when I'm building a character, it's usually related to what their family is like and who their parents are, as well as how I grew up - that nurture side.

By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone.

I think in the case of my father, in terms of the things that influenced me, he never pressed me to go into academics or pressed me to go to a field, and indeed, my behavior was largely to move as far the other direction. I don't think that's uncommon with people with very successful parents.

My mother insisted that her children read.

I didn't know what architecture was except that I lived in a house. I don't even think that I knew the word for a long time. My dad funneled me into engineering because it was his background.

My mother was a teacher, my father was a community organizer. I come from a working class background.

I really owe everything to my parents and their devotion and drive to see to it that their children had the education which led to the opportunities that they never were able to have.