You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.

I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

I'm approaching a period in my life though where I'd like to be totally absorbed into music, doing concerts, writing something. Basically, that IS what I am doing.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

We are, each of us, hopeless hopers.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second.

As long as you were comfortable with yourself and believed in yourself, then you could just throw out all that nonsense of worrying about your status and "success" and other people's opinions.

Free and quality education is a fundamental liberty

Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.

Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Violence is used to portray what happens in a film. It only helps portray the actors and what they do. I think it is more about the story, when you have something to play off of.

The White House and the president [Donald Trump] himself remains very worrisome, alarming, almost.