Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.

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.

We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us.

You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.

Jazz music is the power of now.

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