There's the tradition in jazz of having the “Battle of the Bands” and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.

I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?

The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up.