A man goes to the village to visit the wise man and he says to the wise man, “I feel like there are two dogs inside me. One dog is this positive, loving, kind, and gentle dog and then I have this angry, mean-spirited, and negative dog and they fight all the time. I don't know which is going to win.” The wise man thinks for a moment and he says, “I know which is going to win. The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog.

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

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

If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher.

You need to work as hard to be a great teammate as you do to be a great player

Families that I lived with a little bit in junior high and quite a bit in high school and college. Just to have a safe, sane space with food and things like that. That's what I needed. And people were really kind and really generous. So I think the world kind of opened up my first years of performing arts, studying classical saxophone with Caesar DiMauro.

Leadership is not just about what you do but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do.