We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

Music is the framework around the silence.

I still got my Ferrari.

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.