When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.

Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.

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

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

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

Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem.

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.