When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

How much easier my life would be if I did not love you! I thought. How much less painful, but how much plainer. How much less color there would be in the world.

The Bible clearly says that faithfulness and persecution often go hand in hand.

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.

A man's state before God may always be measured by his prayers.

Sleep - kinsman thou to death and trance and madness.

There was another war-related casualty today. The French were injured when they tried to jump on our bandwagon.

September 11 is one of our worst days but it brought out the best in us. It unified us as a country and showed our charitable instincts and reminded us of what we stood for and stand for.

God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be inacted and inforced in any civill state.

You want me to sneak up on an angel and rip out its pinfeathers, so you can make a fashion statement?

How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?