Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That's my stick.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn't recognize my voice.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.