Negative thoughts are the nails that build a prison of failure.

Don't chase success. Decide to make a difference and success will find you.

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.

Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.

I think we had a Ben Webster/Gerry Mulligan record... that might have been it. We only had a few records in the house.

There are a lot of different ways you can be a part of this music and love it and make a contribution that's personal to you.

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.