“Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive – but that was totally subconscious.”

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

My dream is to put together a performance of the evolution of black music with Cirque du Soleil . I would also like to do street opera and children’s books. But even as I work toward these things, I want to simplify my life.

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

The process is the most beautiful part.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

It’s the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.

Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

My grandmother had this high-tech security system – a rusty nail she used to lock the door.

The only music I don’t like is bad music.

I’m just a musician and a record producer.

A lot of the guys were like that – Oscar Pettiford – they just took me under their wing, and that’s why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.

Let’s not get too full of ourselves. Let’s leave space for God to come into the room.

The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. ‘Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it’s done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.’

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.

For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness.

When consciousness has no thoughts in it, one can experience spirit and live in harmony with the universal forces.

The surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.

Enjoying consciousness every now and then for a second or so before splitting up to become bits and pieces of trees and stars and french fries.

When our consciousness is quiet, the waves of thought cease and we see clearly enough to relate back to our spirit. we connect with who we really are.

The history of human consciousness is marked by the battle between the old awareness.

A person is not earth, not water, Not fire, not wind, not space, Not consciousness, and not all of them. What person is there other than these?