[Charlie "Bird" Parker] would sit down and ask [Phil Wood], "What do you think about this whole secondary Viennese school with Schoenberg, Berg and Webern? Are you listening to that music and what do you feel about it?" These were the conversations that he was having. And he also said, what he learned from Charlie Parker was, not that he studied with him in the formal sense, is that the first thing that Charlie Parker would always ask was, "Did you eat today?".

You hear about the struggles with substances and all that, but [Phil Wood] was a really a great guy. This was a great man.

I remember Art Blakey saying to me, "Just remember, we're blessed to do what we do."

Only through service and sacrifice can you become great.

There are great jazz educators that I meet all the time. I met a guy named Paul Luchessi who has a high school jazz program in Fresno. And Bob Athayde who runs a junior high program in Lafayette, California. And man, we walked into these schools and Paul Luchessi said, "Jon is the composer of Paradox." A hundred or something kids started to applaud. "What? You guys know that? I'm so blown away.

Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you.

I never got discouraged for long, but we all got our butts kicked musically.