The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

We used to get on planes, and they'd ask who we were, and we'd say, 'The Dave Brubeck Quartet', and they'd say, 'Who?' In later years they'd say, 'Oh', which amounts to the same thing.

Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.

Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.