Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

Everyone wants to put people on, I think. And get away with it! That's the thing: put people on and get away with it! That's a science in itself.

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

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins.

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.

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