You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.
You have to know that your real home is within.
Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.
It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.