There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.

The goal in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at your final destination as late as possible, with a smile on your face.

Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.

I don't want my children to be what I want them to be. I want them to become everything God created them to be.

I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.

I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.