I always believed in being myself.

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

The loudest noise in the world is silence.

There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.

They call her love, love, love, love, love. She is love, and she is all I need.

The truth hurts but a lie will eventually as well

It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth, in other words to silence.

There is one basic cause of all effects.

Your brilliance comes from your spirit. To deny it is arrogance. To accept it is humility.

Anything that I read, I read because I'm interested in it.

I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.

Store up reservoirs of calm and content and draw on them at later moments when the source isn't there, but the need is very great.