In jazz, as in poetry, there is always that play between what’s regular and what’s wild. That has always appealed to me.

In the particular presence of memorable language we can find a reminder of our ability to know and retain knowledge itself: the brightness wherein all things come to see.

When I had no roof I made audacity my roof.

Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are.

I have always been thinking about the sounds and shades and aromas of words - fitting them together or disrupting their customary march - more or less every second of my life, waking and sleeping.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond... a good feeling about his art.

Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.