When I heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.

When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn

Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t.

Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold.

I think that's important to remember - That we're blessed to even be able to attempt to do this [music].

Sometimes I say to my students, "We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired."

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.