I tend to gravitate to the darkest or most obscure part of any venue in an effort to have my own space to experience the music on my own, free from unwanted conversations and other distractions.

To my ears, jazz sounds better in warm weather and after the sun has gone down. While I will listen to some of my favorite jazz records in cooler weather, it's the warmer nights that really make them come alive. Something about those sounds and the heat of the night really makes it happen for me.

I like people. Rightwingers don't. They like business, they don't care about people. I like education, they seem not to care much about it.

I beg young people to travel. If you don't have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you're going to see your country differently, you're going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You're going to get a sense of what globalization looks like.

What you do for yourself is one thing. What you do for others is something else entirely.

I am too far gone to be rehabilitated.

The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'