I think I have more in common with a carpenter than you might think. We're putting things together.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time.

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.

My uncle and my grandfather both worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

God has a way of telling you when to change your strings.

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.

When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

XAVIER: No one should be forced to live their life in any way other than how they choose.

Politicians are people who learn not to blink, when they lie.

You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.

Our lives are full of stress. Some meditate, some walk, some sing and dance. Nature offers us garlic, maitake and hibiscus to relieve stress

It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

[When I was a kid] I was a surgeon, amputating legs and arms of my paper dolls. And I had a little board with little tacks that I would tack them down to do this.

People who can’t see without glasses should wear them.

An [officer] is still a human being. When that fear kicks in, you never know what can happen.

That's the quickest way to my heart: Laughter.

I'm not even reading about the U.S. election, I'm just totally involved in the Canadian one.