I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.

I was blessed that I got married early and had a good wife. That sort of kept me straight. Probably I would have been like Charlie Parker, you know, involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that if I hadn't had this stability.

There are a lot of great players... a lot of great players around, but Louie Bellson is really something special.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

I know all the Latin-American rhythms quite well, but I don't play them exactly like they do in their own country - I add my personal touch.