There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I came to this country when I was twelve years old because my parents wanted to give me new opportunities to succeed. President Obama wants everyone to have the chances I had.

Beauty is objectified pleasure.

I would say, 'Go ask any couple that's been married for 30, 40, 50 years... It hasn't always been roses.'

The desert is no longer a landscape, it is a pure form produced by the abstraction of all others.

I think America as a whole has come more to terms with separating war from the warrior.

there's no justice, there's only love.

If you feel like you're helping someone else, it helps you feel more in control of your world.

The greatest problem all around the world today, whether in America, Japan, China, Russia, India or anywhere else in the world, is that people are not in peace. People want peace.

There is more in every person's soul than we think.

If there are further steps to European integration, the people should have their say at a general election or in a referendum.