“I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smit...” — Madeleine Peyroux Quote

“I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a bunch of people that are on a long list of artists. They were important to me, especially as an early adolescent.”

“My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.”

“Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.”

“The British who arrived in the United States in the eighteen-thirties and forties had imagined the young republic as a wide-eyed adolescent, socially ungainly and politically gauche, but with some hint of promise.”

“Secondary school parents tell me that they are frustrated, that their teachers ignore them, their children don't give them much feedback because they are adolescents, they feel kind of out of the loop.”

“Teenagers blithely skip off to uncertain futures, while their parents sit weeping curbside in the Volvo, because the adolescent brain isn't yet formed enough to recognize and evaluate risk.”