I do feel a responsibility because most people like me that are my age or younger, they don't quite make it over to the jazz side. They flirt with it, but they don't quite marry it.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Jazz is a state of mind. There's no boundaries.

When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.

I think there's good music out there. I just think that radio stations don't play it.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.

I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I'm not really married to the craft of jazz - I'm married to me, and my style, and whatever I produce.

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

"Cannonball Adderley said, 'First 20 minutes we'll jazz out, then the last hour it's gonna be songs that people paid to see.' Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce."

Getting an education is not only a matter of checking the boxes as your life progresses

We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.

I do everything for a reason. Most of the time the reason is money.

Like associates with like.

Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality.

Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.

You yourself are to blame. This weeping and wailing and knocking your heads into corners [against brick walls, as it were] will not do you the least good.

By happy chance we saw A twofold image: on a grassy bank A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same!