My name is on the thing, but the reality of it is, when I get up there on stage, I'm part of a band. I'm part of a unit. It's like a basketball team.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

Karma: The delusion of the pretentious who think the Universe should act as their debt collector.

To be given dominion over another is a hard thing

Each era has the fatal hubris to believe that it has once and for all climbed to the top of the mountain and can see everything as it is, from the highest and most objective vantage point possible.

If you are different and alone it doesn't mean you won't see a moonlight

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

I believe that the madness of Communism would be the sole victor.

Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will fear you.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living.'