The best thing you can do is just go and have fun with [competition].

[Eddie Locke] had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget.

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.

The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.

Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.

Sometimes you think "Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie "Bird" Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever." But as [Phil Wood] said to me, "Man, Bird listened to everything."

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.