I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful.

If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.

Music is a way of life, it's everything. I play drums and that's what I believe I was born to do.

That's what the drummer is supposed to do. Keep the time. If you can do something else besides that, fine. But the time is essential and non-negotiable.

To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

You should get the feeling you should move. That's what is meant when people say the music moves me.

I feel very, very gratified when people are complimentary to what I have done or appreciated it with sincerity... It makes me feel that maybe I did do something that was proper and that was right.

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

Stop blaming everybody and everything for what's going on. If you really believe that you deserve better, then you would have it.

Angry people attract angry people and live in an angry world and this validates their opinion that the world is angry.

A fool and her money are soon courted.

One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.

I didn't want my parents to support me. I wanted to prove that I could do it by myself.

I've had soccer moms come up and tell me they can relate when I say that I want to throw my baby in the trash.

Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one the other disappears.

I hate holidays because it's the quietest; it's the most deafening sound in my apartment.

The president-elect seems to want Russia as a friend. President Obama arguably has not wanted to say that Russia is that great of a threat.