Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

I've made more than 50 records with a wide range of music. I've often veered to check something out.

It keeps me in touch with younger musicians who are constantly saying, 'Have you heard this new artist, or this new guitar player?' It keeps you reaching.

It hasn't been hard getting nominated, but winning it is another thing. The competition is tough.

Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.

I think I always have been someone who likes to push at the edges of things, looking for something different.

I've discovered all kinds of music and done all kinds of music over the past 40 years, from playing tango with Piazzolla to all the different bands I've had.

I was surprised when I finally moved to Boston and the East Coast, to discover that there weren't that many vibraphone players around. And I was the only one playing with four mallets.

I was a big fan of Jim Hall as well. I liked his comping style, his accompanying. And that he played, generally, four note chords, the top four strings of the guitar.

I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one.

But if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, theres a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression thats possible with the instrument.

...stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present, and even future ills.

Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we'd like to be seen.

Illinois has less than a 12 percent black population and I won with 55 percent of the vote.

We'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

Everyone can lie, young Roger, given cause enough. Even me. It's only that it's harder for those of us who live in glass faces; we have to think up our lies ahead of time.

At the end of the day, though, the entire basis for consent laws doesn't make sense. We're not old enough to decide if we don't want a baby, but we are old enough to have one?

Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys--maybe you just have to be angry all the time.

Doing nothing is very hard to do... you never know when you're finished.

I'm very superstitious. I come from a family that's big on not painting the nursery until the baby is home.

Look how men live, always precariously balanced between good and bad fortune.