Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European 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.

Find a vocation and passionately commit your life to it.

We need falsifications to make the past inhabitable.

The only candidate I'd allow to play my music would be Bigfoot, and unless we're talking about foraging for squirrels, he's notoriously apolitical.

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

I don't have any blindness when it comes to my money. As an actor, you can get distracted by your work. I do keep an eye on my nest egg, if you will.

Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society.

Today, I behold all the abundance that surrounds me.

We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before, during, and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope I get the bliss. And I know I'm going to have to work for it. But I've got to say, really, I have no kind of, can I say "secular religiosity"? ... I don't have a denominational sight.

You can't always be a leading lady.