I hope that I can make good music out of whatever genre I go into. Just to prove to myself that I can.

The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.

I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician; I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.

So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

I don't think there are any pure Africans of the African Americans, but the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the 60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness.

Wisdom is the key to understanding the age, creating the time.