I feel very, very gratified when people are complimentary to what I have done or appreciated it with sincerity... It makes me feel that maybe I did do something that was proper and that was right.

It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful.

If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.

Music is a way of life, it's everything. I play drums and that's what I believe I was born to do.

That's what the drummer is supposed to do. Keep the time. If you can do something else besides that, fine. But the time is essential and non-negotiable.

I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

You should get the feeling you should move. That's what is meant when people say the music moves me.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.

PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you.

Love overlooks a person’s faults. That’s not always easy, but love believes the best in every person. Anybody can return evil for evil, but God wants His people to help heal wounded hearts.

And everyone who wills can hear the Voice. It is within every one. But like everything else it requires previous and definite preparation.

There ain't no Coupe Deville hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jacks box.

We should try to succeed by merit, not by favor. He who does well will always have patrons enough. [Lat., Virtute ambire oportet, non favitoribus. Sat habet favitorum semper, qui recte facit.]

Nobody with me at sea but myself.

I am a very active person. I have a lot of energy, and I love to be doing something physical all the time.