I will search for hidden talents that I didn't know I had and do my best to cultivate them. I am grateful for each day, and I will try to use each day as a stepping stone to greater achievements.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

Musical composition should bring happiness and joy to people and make them forget their troubles.

We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.

Jazz is not background music.

Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.

The ensemble playing is as clean as a whistle. The band plays in tune and with dynamics. Also, there is some fine arranging and orchestrating going on here, and the soloists perform at top level.

I personally do not believe in politics, hatred, or anger in my musical composition.

Life doesn't happen to you, it happens FROM you.

There are a world of answers, outside the loop.

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

We are all part of something magnificent.

I would do my damn best to be more happy than not.

Not feeling compassion for a stranger is like not feeling when one's foot has caught fire

The poorest education that teaches self-control is better than the best that neglects it.

I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.

I do wear lipstick because when I suddenly get pale or green, it seems whole blood goes away.

These are the days for strong men to courageously expose wrong.