I don't remember feeling love.

Every day you must be able to say, I have to get up because I'm needed by someone. As long as you have that, you're healthy.

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

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.

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

My brother died of cancer two years ago (1998), renal cell carcinoma. He was my only real brother and I didn't know what to do. I'd never been so desperate in my life.

Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.