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

I'm very gratified that I had my little 15 minutes,or whatever [at the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]. It certainly didn't make me rich and famous. But it helped a little bit for a while.

Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.

It's a complicated story [hoe I got into music ]. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.

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

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

I saw that [music] reflected in my mother when we listened to these records [of Bob Gordon]. And I felt it too.