Trends of the times be damned.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Jazz is a state of mind. There's no boundaries.

When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.

I think there's good music out there. I just think that radio stations don't play it.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.

I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I'm not really married to the craft of jazz - I'm married to me, and my style, and whatever I produce.

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

"Cannonball Adderley said, 'First 20 minutes we'll jazz out, then the last hour it's gonna be songs that people paid to see.' Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce."

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

Human beings are obscured by their desire to have and their greed to own preventing their natural cause of "being

It's the steady constant driving to the goal for which you're striving not the speed with which you travel that will make your victory sure.

The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.

There's no "brothers" when it comes to white people. We are just complete individuals. We don't care about each other. He's not my brother; my brother lives in Ohio - I don't know that guy.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

I don’t want to react because I don’t want them to know it’s a bad word, but I want to encourage them to talk so I’m like, ‘That’s good!’

The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis.

You hear sounds and orchestration, it's ... the fastest way, I think, to your emotions, even if you don't understand the language of the song.

The road that I'm on is a path that I didn't choose. It chose me. I'm just trying to walk it, and to do the best that I can to honor and respect it.