I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.

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.

Love is where leadership begins.

A little tranquil lake is more significant to my life than any big city in the world

Politics is pop. Our job as comedians - especially me, as a late-night talk show, which is a broader audience - is to amplify what we think America is thinking.

I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence... and he said "parole".

You listen to people that love you and you listen to people that you trust. Most of all, you listen to yourself.

The truth is that you are as unique on the inside as you are on the outside.

You don't have to fight every battle. You don't have to respond to every critic. You don't have to be offended because of what others say. You can rise above these things and soar.

Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties...

What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.