If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.

Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies

When every heart is filled with peace and every mind is searching for peace, how can there be war?

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people...religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin!

I've never done anything comedic. In all the years I've been an actor, I've never delivered one comedic line.

I would never be popular. I didn't want to be; I liked being shy. I'd never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits.

I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage.

How can one become enlightened? One can, because one is enlightened - one just has to recognize the fact.

No one has ever been able to convince me that optimism is not preferable to pessimism.

The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.

You can change. You can 'come unto Christ, and be perfected in him.'