I know all the Latin-American rhythms quite well, but I don't play them exactly like they do in their own country - I add my personal touch.

As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bepop, the second was homeopathy.

Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

The older you get, the more you realize you need a handful of good, close, tight friends.

I've been offered proof of God's existence at regular intervals in my life through experiences so profound they've given goose bumps to atheists.

If you cannot see the fineness in my Hammer, you'd best look at him with better eyes.

Spiderman can climb walls and he's got a cool outfit.

I'm curvy and wholesome.

The surest sign that you're working with the life-affirming kind of discipline, rather than the spirit-depressing kind, is that you don't complain very much about doing what it takes.

I can die now. I've lived twice.

Praise day at night, and life at the end.

Intuition is the whisper of the soul.

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of the world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.