Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?

I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?

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