And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

You get a show where people are jumping up and dancing, but it's not a critical event in the sense of profound catharsis. Essentially it's celebratory.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

I find that here in the States, audiences are generally less knowledgeable, from the cognitive point of view, though they are emotionally more receptive.

I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can happen to my kids.

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole.

In peacetime some sort of introduction is generally required to make a person's acquaintance

But then there is the one who seems to have a hard time separating the actor's work from reality.

I'm no longer afraid of conflict, and I don't think conflict is a bad thing.

I want you to be yourself, but not with other dudes.

If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It's a process of innovation.

Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.

I think what endurance sports teach you is to stay dedicated, stay focused, and also to understand youre going to have ups and downs, but you need to keep running right through them.

Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

I learned very early in my career that when I don't arrive on set, production will shut down, which means people won't get paid; there's that much responsibility.

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.