Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

What the new mate, sports car, or unexpected check could never do, Christ says, "I Can." You'll love how he achieves it. He reconnects your soul with God.

God is Holy.God is pure.God is faithful.God is gracious.God is merciful.

Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else.

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?

I went through absolute stress and mayhem. I couldn't go out, because people were constantly on my back all the time.

You know, my father died of cancer when I was a teenager. He had it before it became popular.

I do believe that ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.

In the sibling society, both the adult and the elder get lost, and no one knows where they are.

Say it, do it, preach it, shout it, but never, absolutely never, believe your own bullshit.

It can't always be a honeymoon