You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

The process is the most beautiful part.

Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.

Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.