Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.

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.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

I look back and say, "This must have been somebody else." I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.

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.

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

I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.