I get so much from having the opportunity to interface with the younger people and to bring information to them and to represent our culture and our way of life. The feeling and the warmth and the love, it's unbelievable. The type of exchange that goes on between students and teachers or visiting people who are doing master classes, and not just when they're musicians. Even general classes, when the students are not necessarily musicians.

The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

Who creates a thing is not as important as what the thing is. Who created baseball? Who created basketball? Who created the space program? Who created - we could go on and on. We could argue about who created something. We all are participants in it.

I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.

Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

Thank the good Lord for a job.