What I feel the most confident about as a teacher, whatever my strengths and weaknesses are. The fact that I got to be around those people, I feel like that I have something to offer because of that blessing. Being around them a little bit... I'm not them. I'm certainly not trying to compare myself to them. But in lieu of them being able to impart something, the fact that I had so many people like that that were kind to me and talked to me was invaluable.

So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution.

The only person who can limit your possibilities is you.

I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great.

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.

We had been thrown out of a couple of places that we had lived in when I was a kid and all the family photos and records and toys were long since gone. But I think somebody had given us a couple of records.

A lot of musicians have said things to me like, "Music saved my life". And "I'm standing on the shoulders of dozens of people that you've never heard of that were like angels for me that came out of the woodwork." And that's really the case for me. I had so many people that did those kinds of things for me.