Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other.

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Contentment is joy of life.

You tell anyone I cried, I'll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.""Fair enough.

Joy of giving, joy of receiving.

However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.

In fact, I love singing. I just have a small problem with pitch, tune, melody, and lyrics. But that's never stopped me.

If you go in with a plan to make a point, and you know what your narrative is going to be already, in our mind, it's probably not worth telling.

Self worth and net worth are not the same.

Because nothing makes love and life matter more than the knowledge that some day it must end.

My life is a life of accepting what the universe has offered me... I don't fight the universe.