We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.

I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.

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

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

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

Who creates a thing is not as important as what the thing is. Who created baseball? Who created basketball? Who created the space program? Who created - we could go on and on. We could argue about who created something. We all are participants in it.

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.