You have to know that your real home is within.

A lot of the guys were like that - Oscar Pettiford - they just took me under their wing, and that's why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.

I don't remember feeling love.

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song. That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers. They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.