I would like, with the sun shining through the window on a crisp early-autumnal mid-morning, with a sufficiency of Monster Cappucino flowing in my veins to prompt minimal sentience, to declare my view for the record that Drummer Jokes are a cruel and pernicious form of humour introduced to the world by under-humoured persons lacking in sensitivity and concern for other drummers.

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

The creative musician ... is ... the radio receiver, not the broadcasting station. His personal discipline is to improve the quality of the components, the transistors, the speakers, the alloys in the receiver itself, but never to concern himself overmuch with putting out the program. The program is there; all he has to do is receive it as far as possible.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.