Jazz stands for freedom.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired.

I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.