If you looked around, you'd be glad you couldn't see.

Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.

Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.

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 always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.