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.

It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

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

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.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.