Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

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.

Beauty runs skin deep not on superficial assumptions or criticisms of many people. Live with a beautiful mind and heart. Live with a beautiful soul.

When he (Walter Cronkite) drank, he had an appetite for both history and political bullshit.

I gave you three proofs of witchcraft. A cat that drinks blood! A horse that talks! And a man who propagates POODLES!

Love is a mental madness.

The world is governed by opinion.

You're not looking for the Rolls Royce and the big fancy trailer. Those are supposed to be the byproducts of having fun and then getting good at what you do.

Computing should be taught as a rigorous - but fun - discipline covering topics like programming, database structures, and algorithms. That doesn't have to be boring.

I'm a very intense person. When I go after something, I want to go after it with everything I have. I want to push myself to the edge.

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.

If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God.