1900: Winter comes, you wish it was summer. Summer comes, you live in dread of winter. That's why we never tire of travel.
1900: Christ, did you... did you see the streets, just the streets? There were thousands of them! Then how you do it down there, how do you choose just one... one woman, one house, one landscape to look at, one way to die...?
1900: I think land people waste a lot of time wondering why. Winter comes and can't wait for summer, summer comes and you never can wait for winter. That's why you never tire of traveling or chasing some place far away, where it's always summer. Doesn't sound like a good bet to me.
Italian Immigrant: The voice of the sea, it is like a shout, a shout big a strong, screaming and screaming. And the thing it was screaming was, yoooou... with shit instead of brains... life is immense... can you understand that?
Italian Immigrant: Immense.
1900: Take piano: keys begin, keys end. You know there are 88 of them. Nobody can tell you any different. They are not infinite. You're infinite... And on those keys, the music that you can make... is infinite. I like that. That I can live by.
1900: You rolled out in front of me a keyboard of millions of keys, millions and billions of keys that never end. And that's the truth Max, that they never end. That keyboard is infinite... and if that keyboard is infinite, then on that keyboard there is no music you can play. You're sitting on the wrong bench... That is God's piano.
1900: It's like a big scream, telling you that life is immense. Once you've finally heard it, then you really know what you have to do to go on living. I can't stay here forever. The ocean would never tell me a thing. But if I get off, live on land for a couple of years, then I'll be normal, just like the others. And then maybe one day, I'll make it to the coast, look up, see the ocean, and hear it's scream.
Max: You're never really done for, as long as you've got a good story and someone to tell it to.
Max: What the hell do you think about when you're playing? Where does your mind go when you hit the keys?
1900: Last night I was in a beautiful country. Women had perfume in their hair, everything glowed. It was full of tides.
Max: He traveled. And each time he ended up some place different. In the heart of London, on a train in the middle of the country, on the edge of a giant volcano, in the biggest church in the world, countin' the columns and staring up at the crucifixes. He traveled.
Max: What is wrong with you?
1900: I can't help it. Music makes me cry.
1900: It wasn't what I saw that stopped me Max... it was what I didn't see.
Max: Leave the ship, marry a nice woman, and have children. All those things in life which are not immense but are worth the effort.
1900: You're the one who invented jazz, right?
Jelly Roll Morton: That's what they say. And you're the one who can't play, unless you have the ocean under your ass.
1900: That's what they say.
