I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Pure joy is rare. That’s why for every meal I eat a really bloody steak.

Understanding begets empathy and compassion even for the meanest beggar - Oromis

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness whether it be to make baskets or broadswords or canals or statues or songs.

I kinda feel like an idiot sometimes. Although I am an idiot, so it kinda works out.

You don't... get it, boy... This isn't a mudhole... it's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon.

Psychologists maintain that the dizzy feeling of intense romantic love lasts only about 18 months to-at best-three years

When I feel confused or depressed, I remember back to junior high and I silently repeat, 'This, too, shall pass.'

Mr. President, you’re entitled as a president to your own airplane, and to your own house, but not to your own facts.

Every bad thing that's happened to me has defined me, has shaped, has moulded me.

For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.