When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

The coffee is not strong enough to keep me awake.

Honestly, happy. This happened for a reason. By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.

I'd rather be useful than rich. It's more essential to feel you're doing something that's worth doing, rather than making a lot of money.

There is no future for those who cannot or will not think.

The phrase "spiritual journey" is one that I've only become familiar with comparatively recently. We wouldn't have put it like that when I was a kid.

I'm known for my handwritten notes.

The soil in return for her service keeps the tree tied to her, the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.

So I think we're, we're, we're as broad a political party, if not broader than the Democratic Party, just in a different political spectrum.

What does it mean when your heart's already numb? You're a professional.

That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.