In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

Real practice means working on stuff you're not good at. Real practice is about butting your head against the wall repeatedly until you get it right.

I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.

I love movies where you can sense that the director risked biting off more than they can chew.

'La La Land' is about the city I live in. It's about the music that I grew up playing; it's about movies that I grew up watching. Even the big spectacle of the movie feels private to me in that way.

I love the idea of thinking of cinema as not that far from music. A lot of my favourite movie makers, the way they move their cameras or the way they cut just feel very musical - even if the movies have no music in them at all.

There something to be said for having even unrealistic dreams. Even if the dreams don't come true - that, to me, is what's beautiful about Los Angeles. It's full of these people who have moved there to chase these dreams.

I like movies where you feel like it was actually thought through.

I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter. The conductor would just rip into me, and it lasted for years.

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he'd approve of my playing.

When someone is playing drums, they aren't actually moving around a space; they're just moving their arms and limbs. They're stuck behind the drum set. So to film someone playing the drums and make it feel as kinetic as a car chase or a shootout or a battle scene was the challenge.

I'm too self-serious for a comedy.

Certainly, grades only matter so much when you're in Hollywood. But I became an utterly motivated, devoted, committed student. I was a good student because I was convinced that it would somehow help me in my quest to become a filmmaker.

I remember moving out to L.A. straight after college and just starting to try to write scripts and trying to get stuff off the ground.

Whiplash' was just a lucky kind of convergence of events in that I'd been trying to get a bigger project off the ground with no success for a while, and then finally, out of frustration, I just wrote this leaner, meaner, personal script about my experiences as a jazz drummer, and that's the one that wound up getting made.

I never desperately wanted to be a jazz drummer. If anything, I was motivated a lot by fear. Fear of the conductor, fear of the future.

There's something very particular about the kind of rage you feel when you're alone in a practice room by yourself, unable to master a simple thing like a rudiment. You keep trying to master this very basic thing, and when you don't get it, you just scream. I broke a lot of drum heads, and I broke a lot of sticks.

There are no large-scale original musicals being made right now. They're all Broadway adaptations and jukebox musicals or catalog musicals, and they just don't interest me as much.

You're only the boss if you put up your own money.

A real man won't ask or answer questions about another man's money.

It's important for people to believe in themselves.

Work harder than everyone, be patient, and just know that if you're going to do something on your own, you're gonna have to feel some pain.

I always knew that content was the best way to sell things, but my thing was, why sell other people's stuff if I have a point of view?

You speak things into existence, but there's a gift and a curse with that. You got to be careful what you say.

I'm not one to be paying too much attention to what another dude's doing.

'Hustle & Flow' came out, and I was really rooting for 'Hustle & Flow' because, you know, it was a hip-hop movie, and it was a good movie. It was well acted.

How can another man call another man boss? That's like calling another man 'Daddy.'

I don't complain about other people's game - I just create my own.

Number one, I am a true movie maker. And, you know, I am very much - I don't want to say infatuated, but I'm impressed with the art of making a movie and invoking emotion. You know, when I started making movies, I thought it was easy, and then when I got into it, I was like, 'This is not easy at all.'

I'm never gonna owe money because every time I get a dollar, I put it into another business, whether it's to buy goods or develop other companies. You don't have money; you have companies. That's one business model. That's mine. And I only associate with other people that are putting up their own money, 'cause they're the only ones that can relate.

The worst disrespect of all time is to disrespect someone's children.

It's important to be enlightened.

I'm a businessman who puts up his own money, so I don't have time to hear about emotion. I gotta get right to the point. I'm going to tell you the truth, I'm going to address the elephant in the room, and we'll all move forward.

Part of keeping work and life in balance is surrounding yourself with people that have similar aspirations.

Being independent is everything. That's all I know.

I might have companies, I might have buildings, I might have art. But money? No, I'm not holding that.

Freedom is priceless.

There's certain lines you just don't cross. You know the one thing that will get a man out of pocket is when you mess with his children.

I think I'm extraordinarily motivated.

When I was young, I read the Bible, and I already knew what it meant to be the good guy - and look what happened to Jesus. So, I already understood that you get ridiculed for telling the truth, and I've always been aware of that. But, I'm a guy with confidence, and I'm not afraid.

God does things and put certain things in front of you to see how strong you are.

I'm an authentic person: I can talk about diabetes and how it affects you because I'm actually diabetic, and I know how much help a person needs, whether it's support physically or just understanding and being conscious of what diabetes really is.

There's things that I see that I did on videos when I was younger that I be like, 'Damn, I was bugging.' Champagne Dame, that dude, he was bugging. I don't even know that guy.

If somebody asks you the same questions 25 times, maybe 2,500 times, do you still want to talk about the same thing?

When my children look and ask about what I do, they know I'm the boss.

I've never tried to be accepted. When everyone is doing one thing, I've always had the instinct to go the other way. I don't understand how an individual with their own mind, their own values, and their own beliefs can be so willing to just follow what everybody else is doing. How can you make history doing what everybody else is doing?

I don't believe in bullying in any form, but especially not on my children.

I work to go on vacation. Hopefully, the more money I make, my vacations will get a little longer to the point where they last a year.

If I feel that somebody is hurting other people, then I'm going to make sure other people know - other people know about them.

I don't think my success or me having the opportunity to have success is from our generation. I think it's from the generations before us. I think it's the fact that people like Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and people like that fought for us to have the freedom to do and say what we want and have the opportunity to make money.