If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.

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.

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

It's our job to just do as much as we can to enlighten the people about it and to represent it by playing it with some integrity. That's what I try to do.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.