If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician.

I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets.

What we used to say was whoever had the bow tie got to lead the band. There was never any jealousy.

If I had grown up in any place but New Orleans, I don't think my career would have taken off. I wouldn't have heard the music that was around this town. There was so much going on when I was a kid.

The damage and destruction from the soft brush of pen on paper, a minuscule twitch of muscles at the end of manicured fingers, and people's lives forever altered.

Be thankful that you are on your feet, for there are people who can't even walk down the street. - RVM.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

But you have to figure that if it’s too hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

The West is not in the West. It is a project, not a place.

The tragedy of my job [journalist] is that I rarely get to go where I want to go. I have to go where the job takes me.

There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.

Nobody in Britain has voted for 4 million people to come here in the last 15 years, and for probably another 3 million to come between now and 2020.

Boys and boys' body image and clothes have become just as important an issue for boys as for girls.

Sometimes I just get into the zone of the song, but in the outset I feel like I love to cater to people - but not necessarily at the expense of my artistry or anything like that.