They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements.

The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other.

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

In the conventional storyline, I’m supposed to be the one slaying dragons to save you, the princess in distress. So, you see, I feel odd being the rescued.

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap

The only sin is pride.

We live in a time where there's an alienation factor. There's a certain disconnection. We don't have any real sense of community anymore.

I did for the fun of it

I'm a terribly irresponsible eater - I love soft-boiled eggs and chocolate. I never met a chocolate I could not eat.

The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today.

I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

With the historian it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.

The history of America is the history of a genocide that didn't end yet, the genocide of American civilizations.