Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

When I have them working together, it's like a beautiful kaleidoscope.

For me, being an innovator doesn't mean being more intelligent, more rich, it's not a word, it's an action.

The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

I don't try to please when I play. I try to cure.

Music has many uses and I think the most perfected use that music has is one of a healing quality.

Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we've forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We've separated music from life.

But now, here were the British among us, upon our soil where the sun rises over one lake and sets upon another.

What separates people who made their dreams come true is not setting goals to achieve a life the way they expect it to be, but how they expect to be, in order to achieve it.

Deal lovingly with others and especially yourself

It's the most gratifying thing to have young girls telling me, 'I love that you do a photo shoot in pants and a button up shirt, and you still look cool.'

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.

No one can hand you anything as a dancer. You have to earn it.

I remember quite well that 10,000 audience sang with us three on the spot, and ever since then, I always thought the Chinese audience are the greatest audience.

It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired.

'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.

If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.