In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

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.

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.

The book's always better than the movie.

But sometimes, in order to win, you have to make sacrifices.

Don't squash creativity, inspire it!

Why tomorrow when there is today?

I have these new policies toward my life, like 'I will not accelerate when I see the yellow light.'

Communism is just one big telephone company.

I am often asked which picture is my favorite. This is like asking a mother which child she likes the most.

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

The soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations; these incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls.