I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.

I don't think I went a year or so without a record between 1959 and 1979, sometimes two.

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.