Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind

Your government has problems...my government has problems. I can't be a judge. All I can do is be an ambassador of love. I'm a musician, not a soldier, and if I'm invited to a place in order to play and bring love, I'll always accept the invitation.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like “Midnight in Paris.” Nostalgia isn’t so enticing.

My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.

I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.