My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.

I communicate my innermost perceptions through art.

Good people are always so sure they're right.

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

Telling it like it is means telling it like it was and how it is now that it isn't what it was to the is now people.

In this life and the next, you're my only hope at happiness.

When I was stalking my special lady friend on MySpace, people would always say, 'Is this really Marilyn Manson or some kind of psycho?' And I'm like, 'Both'

I started as a tap dancer in Durban, which is on the coast. That was an important part of growing up, turning on the radio in the morning and hearing Zulu singing or the news in Zulu.

I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.