If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

What is the point of having a civilization, if we do not practice being civilized!

You don't have true freedom until you allow a diversity of opinion and a diversity of voices.

I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

Be mindful of everything going on around you and always be on point but don't be so on point that you lose that ability to be what it was that got you out there.

A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat.

Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.

The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery.

The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.