I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.