I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.

The pressure of show business is on all the time and show business is a fickle business. Whatever is popular now - that's all that counts. I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I'm doing and why.

I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.

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

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 believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.

The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.