I guess I'm fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize 'I guess', because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Just remember that when nobody else was there for you I was.And when nobody else gave a damn I did.

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.

Honest Abe never lied. That's the good thing. That's the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you [Hillary Clinton].

I have never met a designer who was retained to keep things the same as they were

Office hours are from 12 to 1 with an hour off for lunch.

Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.

Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.

But I'm a citizen of Texas and try to spend most of my time there.