I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

To associate with other like-minded people in small purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.

You can't enter a contest emotionally charged. It clouds your judgment, it clouds your reaction.

I knew that God put me on this earth to be on the radio.

I think the qualities I look for in a girl I'd like to be my girlfriend would be the way Lindsay's character is before she becomes a plastic. Very real.

I love people and entertaining. The fact I can still do it, and it's with my wife is phenomenal. I wanna reach 95 years!

Tropical rainforests [are] the only place you can go nowadays and not get ‘friended.’

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

Eating, drinking, sleeping a little laughter ! much weeping! Is that all ? Do not die here like a worm. Wake up! Attain immortal bliss!

I think that the boy-woman is a very strong image and a lot of fascinating women are like that: Gala [Dalí].