I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.

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!

Don't leave yet, " he said, his voice hoarse. "Let me do something. Let me feed you. Hold you. Rub your shoulders. Change your oil. Anything, please.

A man on a mission would bring his heaviest artillery, and it looked like this guy hadn’t even packed a pocket knife.

See, 'A Time to Kill' was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

Scotsmen, she had occasion to observe, often did have nice knees. Perhaps that was why they insisted upon kilts.

Everything I was feeling, all the hurt and the pain and the emotion I was going through, I put into my music.

He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.

I think retirement beats the heck out of life after death, that's for sure.

You won't ever see me being totally sexy on 'Rookie Blue.' It's not right for the character, anyway.

Be quiet now and wait. It may be that the ocean one, the one we desire so to move into and become, desires us out here on land a little longer, going our sundry roads to the shore.

God defend me from that Welsh fairy, Lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!