That's what the drummer is supposed to do. Keep the time. If you can do something else besides that, fine. But the time is essential and non-negotiable.

It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful.

If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.

Music is a way of life, it's everything. I play drums and that's what I believe I was born to do.

I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

You should get the feeling you should move. That's what is meant when people say the music moves me.

I feel very, very gratified when people are complimentary to what I have done or appreciated it with sincerity... It makes me feel that maybe I did do something that was proper and that was right.

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I always wrote something – stories, poetry, articles, newsletters, letters. Most writers can't help themselves! It's a compulsion.

I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.

Well I should be sitting in an air-conditioned office in a swivel chair, talking trash to the secretary. Saying, hey now mama, come on over here.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and J.F Kennedy were Presidents in very different times.

People care enough to write blogs and reviews and things, which is nice.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.

Whereas smaller computer languages have features designed into them, C++ is unusual in having a whole swathe of functionality discovered, like a tract of 19th century Africa.