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.

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.

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

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

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.

Have a big enough heart to love unconditionally, and a broad enough mind to embrace the differences that make each of us unique.

Don't talk about heaven if you've never been to Bali.

Labor saving devices have destroyed many jobs but have given rise to many new ones. It simply is up to us if we are going to resist or embrace the future.

Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.

When he's happy, it makes you happy too.

I wanted to be an abstract painter, but I was rotten at it.

Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.

It will be most pleasing to O[ur] L[ord] if you husband your strength in order to serve Him better.

We must say no to illegal immigration so we can continue to say yes to legal immigration.