In 1958, I decided that I was going to live in Europe permanently. So in 1959 I moved to Lugano, Switzerland.

My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.

To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years.

Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.

Sponsors and networks will really go all out and simply evaluate people on the basis of talent.

Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

If you don't get substantially what you want, be ready to walk. And don't look back.

There are very few groups that really stay together. The leaders of groups make enough money to be able to afford to work a maximum of 35-40 weeks a year.

If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good.

I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade.

Germany is probably the richest country in Western Europe. Yet they wouldn't take any television with Duke and Ella, their reaction being that people weren't interested in it.

A book series is never truly over. The story lives on, even when the final page has been turned.

If you close your eyes, you get to control your own darkness.

The feeling of freedom, driving into scenery as green and lush as a postcard of Ireland was close to bliss.

You must not blame us scientists for the use which war technicians have put our discoveries.

Humanity is just a virus with shoes.

I'm just a true Irish boy at heart. I'm just myself, I stick by my guns and I treat people the way I think they should be treated, regardless of their status. And I just have a laugh.

I can charm my way out of a situation when I screw up.

If I say that God is good, that is not true. God is not good. I am good, and if I say that God is wise, that is not true. I am wiser than he is.

Respecting differences is very difficult.

Never stop thinking, improving, innovating.