Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since.

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

For me, music and life are all about style.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.