It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules...It's hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it.

There are all kinds of things that can be done. You can change rhythms, you can change chords, you can change whole concepts. But it will only work, on a record or in a performance, if you can make the people buy it.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.

I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.