Of the One O'Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: "I wish it were mine".

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.

New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?

How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.