When you get cancer, it's like really time to look at what your life was and is, and I decided that everything I've done so far is not as important as what I'm going to do now.

If you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from.

I had sat in one day in Central Park with Bonnie and Delaney, and Duane was playing with them, so I asked if he wanted to work on an album. You never had to say to him how to play the guitar.

When you get cancer, it's like really time to look at what your life was and is, and I decided that everything I've done so far is not as important as what I'm going to do now.

For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.