Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.

If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

I was always willing to say, "Let's see what happens," when something came up that looked like it might help me get a little closer to where I wanted to be . . .

Keep on listening & tapping your feet.

I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter.

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel ... and that's what I've been doing all my life.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

Faithfulness imparts God's reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option.

It’s very difficult sometimes to put into words one’s feelings, especially when one is not quite certain what those feelings are. (Catherine)

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.

Humans have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth.

I've always been a science fiction fan since I had understood the conception of what a story was.

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them

I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.