When you are playing with someone who really has something to say, even though they may be otherwise quite different in style, there’s one thing that remains constant. And that is the tension of the experience, that electricity, that kind of feeling that is a lift sort of feeling. No matter where it happens, you know when that feeling comes upon you, and it makes you feel happy.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.

I want to be the force which is truly for good.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.