I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

To inspire others, be an example and live by example.

When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

You have to work with what you are given, even in Shakespeare. we have our form and it is important that we free ourselves through it.

Everything I make starts very personally.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.

You have to learn not only from your failures. You must also learn from your successes.

I was here for a reason. There was something I was meant not simply to be, but to do- and it wasn't to run or hide or give up the minute things seemed terrifying and impossible.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

I think every album serves as a step in your career.