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.

I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.

Characters who simply have goals opposed by others do not create the effects of a story.

Every evil we see in our society today can be traced back to ignorance.

people have managed to marry without arithmetic

Endless ocean, blue water, dreamy sky, tranquil beach, love in the air, mind fly high.

Those who only look back at the past are certain to miss their future.

Family is the only real wealth.

What does autumn go on paying for with so much yellow money?

Children are the keys of Paradise. They alone are good and wise, because their thoughts, their very lives are prayer.

The vast majority of fiction is written to markets and to this damnable business we have nowadays of categorizing everything.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.