Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other.

I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Love cannot be contained, love is destined to transcend and change.

It's been my Buckingham Palace, my White House, my Taj Mahal, so coming here today as a real member is - well, it's a big deal.

Logic stays true, wherever you may go, So logic never tells you where you live.

My teachers were often very eccentric.

We all live with our losses. We don't want to, but we can

I'm not leaving you if you don't leave me.

I have a 12-year-old daughter, and all the time people will say, 'Oh, she's young!" and you'd be so surprised what you can learn from that 12-year-old if you just opened up your mind.

The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism. Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments.

People tend to shrink with age, especially after age 50 or so. It has to do with spaces between the joints amount of cartilage and posture. Bone length does not change.