I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is

Its more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

One very fundamental thing has not changed and I realized that it will never change... is that I really need to go home and practice.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers.

More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing.

Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play.

Learning to play is mostly about learning to hear, and learning to really listen deeply to sound in a musical way is a lifetime's worth of work.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

Actors are good liars, writers are good liars with good memories.

I don't think you can reach your potential as a writer unless you're a passionate reader, AND read passionately.

If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh 500 pounds.

I didn't realize it until now, but I don't really know anything about them, or what kind of people they are, really. You can't see inside a person's heart.

All the higher forms of life have evolved from some one's ideal of justice, liberty or beauty; and the belief that nothing is too good to be true.

I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence... and he said "parole".

Big wave surfers are human beings that have powers. They are men of enormous gentility.

All the strength and force of man come from his faith in things unseen.

I don't quite understand what Tolstoy's actual personal view of Anna is - whether he likes her or hates her, whether she's the heroine or the antiheroine.