I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

Human resource is limited to the duration of his/her lifespan while time is unlimited.

Like the bronze statue of the Angel of the Waters, those who pursue perfection find themselves paralysed by the possibility of flaw, fault or failure.

Nothing comes easy in life even heart has to beat 72 times in a minute to keep you alive.

It is often the case with finer natures that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age the power of the intellect is unaltered or increased.

Oh, God, puppy dog eyes. From a six-foot-five ancient Viking vampire.

When you're writing about something that happened, it helps you transition to the present.

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

May God our Lord never let me harm anyone when I cannot help him!

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

Nothing changes, until you change. Everything changes, once you change