I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

A hero is someone who enlightened your life, whom you can emulate and adhere.

We are all born equal, and even if we are not, the future is still in our hands.

When you live by the demands and supply of life, it becomes a pleasurable adventure.

Irish as a Paddy's pig.

Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.

People are always talking on their phones, or looking at their phones, because they don't want to be alone with their thoughts.

Normally I can balance two or three things. The problem is when you're out of work and don't have anything to balance. I think people assume you're always busy. You go through dry spells.

I've always felt that the basic unit of writing fiction is the sentence, and the basic unit of the screenplay is the scene.

Let's just say I can never be cast again after Ron Swanson. Then I have a life of theater and woodworking and my wife to look forward to, and that doesn't make me anything but very happy.

If it wasn't for the women's movement, I wouldn't be where I am today.