I have always believed that 98% of a student's progress is due to his own efforts, and 2% to his teacher.

The red and white and starry blue Is freedom's shield and hope.

I am happy now, to recall that I was not only his son but his companion, and whenever there was a hunting expedition or any other pleasure, I was always with him.

Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

A band is only as good as its euphonium section.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.

There is one thing that freezes a musician more than the deadliest physical cold, and that is the spiritual chill of an unresponsive audience!

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.

Anticipation tingled in my stomach: the kind of tingle that at first you don’t know if it’s a good tingle or a bad tingle – just a tingle.

It is a sin to believe evil of others but it is seldom a mistake.

I was a huge Beatles fan. The Stones, Dylan. Later on, I got into Stevie Wonder, and Bill Withers - he's one of my heroes. Al Green, too.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

If you can die, you are confused because death is a perception of something ending and something else obviously beginning, which means we're still hung up on qualities.

Usually I trundle about in trainers and baggy jeans, looking about as attractive as a potato.

I grew up with Al Jarreau. We had a band together and worked these places for three years when neither one of us knew we could make a living doing music.

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

I don't think we find compassion. I think we become the space that compassion wants to live in.

I was always attracted to science fiction movies