Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I'll give it to them.

All art is communication of the artists' ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

I'm motivated. The spirit hits me and I just keep going and don't stop. The more I play, the more I can invent, the more ideas come to me.

It's always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she's the same old broad.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

I always figured I'd still be playing at this age.

We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering, ” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.

The purpose of your life is Joy.

Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.

When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator; and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.

There's a lot of things in life that we don't know why they're coming exactly at this moment.

For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream.

What the world needs are servants, not leaders. Everyone's wish is to become a leader....Let us become a real servant instead.

We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.

I want to be a man who mixes strengths and compassion. That's my magic elixir, so to speak.

Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.