You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.

All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.

I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.