No one really knows how to deal with the unexpected. How do you rehearse the unknown?

Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.'

If all you have is music, then you don't have music

The arts can open the door to the imagination, pushing the envelope of how peace can be created. It takes courage to take this kind of risk, and courage is what we all need to create a better world.

Music is interior decoration.

Go out on the stage as a human being and do not be afraid to show struggle in your music. It's a struggle in life and then struggle and then victory.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

Composing is improvisation slowed down.

You're like the girl who left her shadow in the drawer, but when she went to get it, it wasn't there.

Your humanity is your instrument.

To hell with the rules. I'm going for the unknown.

But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

I feel something so right, doing the wrong thing.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Success is an intoxicant, and intoxicated people seldom have a firm grasp on reality.

Ladies, you wake up tomorrow and the newspaper reads Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth. That would be awesome.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't human and tears weren't rolling down my face and I wasn't pissed and I wasn't angry. There are lots of times that those emotions come out in my career.

Men have always been permitted to be people. We have just recently made it.

Two is the beginning of the end.

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.

I've always kind of been in the middle of every room, trying to get people together, no matter what color they were.