You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

Right now, America is under the gun. It's being tested and is being co-opted in a big way.

To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe.

Music is more objective, I think, than a lot of art is, but a surprising amount of it is cultural.

It's not enough to be the best at what you do. You must be perceived as the only one who does what you do.

Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right.

We are experiencing a real confusion here in the United States, you know. Why is it OK to drink, but it's not OK to take drugs? Blah, blah, blah. What's a crime? What's criminality? What can you do, what can't you do, and so forth. All these things are really confusing. A lot of it is really contradictory; it doesn't really make sense.