The only person who can limit your possibilities is you.

You're not going to have any pension or health care from those $60 nights at you name the club. But I think you do this because you have to do it. You pursue any art form because you need it. Because you love it.

You do [jazz] because you love it and hope many some others may as well. You do this because you need it.

We listened [with my mother] to [Frank] Sinatra and Glen Campbell and we had some Beatles records that I liked. This was in the '70s.

We had Bob's [Gordon] records, and he's on Clifford Brown's first record as a leader. I believe it was Clifford Brown's first record as a leader and had the original versions of Daahoud and Joy Spring that were arranged by Bob's best friend, the West Coast tenor player named Jack Montrose, who I later met.

Joe Henderson, who I maybe, to me, if I had to pick one improviser in my life that I saw live that blew my mind most, especially as a teenager.

I have to say, music was always my self preservation survival technique. This sort of sacred space in my life and in my mind.