I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient.

I think that those elements - light and sound - are beyond democratic. They're into the creative part of life.

I don't try to please when I play. I try to cure.

Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we've forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We've separated music from life.