1972 was a year of many pleasant and rewarding experiences for me

My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.

Music is meant to be a beautiful thing.

I write music people enjoy playing and listening to, and I have a group that loves playing the music.

I tend to not want to put labels or categories on the music, only because people come with preconceived ideas about what they're going to hear, or won't come for this reason.

I was blessed to work with The Jazz Messengers when the two piano players were Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea.

A studio recording is perfection, but emotion and passion come only when you turn on the machine and go for the groove. If you do that with no mistakes, it sounds beautiful.

Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.

I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

Brazilian music has many of the ingredients that I strive for in my own music: Strong melodies and a disciplined but intense rhythmic concept, and interesting harmonies.

In 1994, I started touring again and I recorded two albums for Chesky Jazz.

In her crazy, upside down world, she needed someone like that. A rock that would keep her going, an anchor to keep her from drifting away. Instead, she was alone

All the calculus, quantum mechanics and languages in the world are worthless pieces of information, if they are not brought to the service of the society.

Where the bodily presence is weak and the speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written language the medium of better utterance than faltering lips can achieve?

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.

we should contract our ideas of education, and expect no more from it than it is able to perform.

One way to make tough decisions is to take incremental steps that don't commit you to anything yet.

I'll use the knives for spreading jam, and the gas to warm my greying love.

I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

Maybe, just maybe, two broken people could manage to create something whole.

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.