Be-bop wasn't developed in any deliberate way.

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

The loudest noise in the world is silence.

There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.

I love the way that each book—any book—is its own journey. You open it, and off you go….

I got a horse for my wife. I thought it was a fair swap.

The most beautiful thing about music is that it transcends most anything.

The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages.

They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.

What is it in the actor, the stage, that casts so powerful a spell on the young imagination?

What a solace Christianity must be to one who has an undoubted conviction of its truth!

I would have voted 'no' on the Iraq war and 'yes' to Afghanistan.

The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.

Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in "justice" or in affirmation of "rights" or in defense of "peace" do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.