America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Steel screams when it's forged, it gasps when it's quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son.

Since when did psychiatry become one big, fat Myspace survey?

Yeah! Everything is okay!

European lotteries are the tax on fools.

But Time is a great traitor who teaches us to accept loss.

Talent means energy and persistence and nothing more!

I fell in love with the possibilities of telling the story in the future, and married that quickly.

Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.

Many people think of knowledge as money, They would like knowledge, but do not want to face the perseverance and self- denial that goes into the acquisition of it.

Who needs forgiveness, should the same extend with readiness.