When I say "our," I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important.

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.

I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad.

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.

Don't bullshit' just play.

The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.

When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.