Within a few hours I had them off, was about ready to play the shows. That night I opened, and during the week Harris was over to the house to talk my mother into letting me leave home.

One way and another I was having a ball - playing gigs, jamming and listening to fine musicians. Then came a crisis at home. My stepfather fell sick, and it meant I had to support the family.

I wonder what an agent would do if he had to travel with the band he's booking.

It's not what you play, it's how you play it.

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

If you work on your talent, the plans will fall in automatically.

I have been tied up with music for about as long as I can remember. By the time I was four I was picking out little tunes my mother played on the reed organ in the living-room.

We are the most informed people in the history of civilization—and yet the most confused. Though our heads are crammed with knowledge, our hearts are empty.

The lesser you are, the more you become...

If you can't explain why someone should pay attention to what you're saying, maybe you shouldn't be saying it.

The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me. And I accepted that a long time ago.

Its so much easier to throw rocks than it is to govern.

If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.

Blind yourself, for I am blind.

Joy is not in things; it is in us.

I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul.

Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem.