If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

If I have a dynamite bass player - I have Darryl Jones - it's so easy to write for him because he's such a funky kid and he's gifted. He's like a little genius.

I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.

He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.