Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem.

Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.

I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.

Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

Young kids are always singing and painting. When you get to that second and third grade level, you're supposed to put all that aside.

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.