What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity

Its more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

One very fundamental thing has not changed and I realized that it will never change... is that I really need to go home and practice.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers.

More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing.

Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play.

Learning to play is mostly about learning to hear, and learning to really listen deeply to sound in a musical way is a lifetime's worth of work.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

Display your passion, and others will be inspired. Enthusiasm is contagious.

Let us be guardians, not gardeners

We really are living in the era that all this sci-fi literature and cinema was centered around, but it's not anything like what we envisioned it to be. It's almost like there's too much choice.

You make an open-ended proposition and the audience completes it somehow. That’s what you hope an artwork to be-a constantly living thing.

If I had my life to live over, I'd pick more daisies.

Some members of Congress ought to have their mouths taped instead of their speeches.

William Bennett is my patron saint, one of them. Redd Foxx is another.

If Your Eyes Are Opened, You'll See The Things Worth Seeing.

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood.

There is no purpose in living where there is nothing to do.