“Excellence isn’t an act, it’s a habit.”

If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You’re dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That’s the soul of a country.

I’ve met every freak in the business.

Every day you must be able to say, I have to get up because I’m needed by someone. As long as you have that, you’re healthy.

We stole a box of honey jars one time and went out in the woods and took care of the whole box. I don’t think I touched honey again for 20 years. I never wanted to see honey again.

Prince a true artist in every sense of the world. Gone way too soon.

What happens when you get a big break and you haven’t prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. I see it happen all the time.

It’s easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.

A person’s age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.

I improvised my life along the way – I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

I look back and say, “This must have been somebody else.” I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Editing while you’re writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.

Most important of all, to be successful in life demands that a man make a personal commitment to excellence and to victory, even though the ultimate victory can never be completely won.

We don’t settle for anything less than excellence.

The ability for a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people can pull together as a team.

Knowledge is merely brilliance in organization of ideas and not wisdom. The truly wise person goes beyond knowledge.

Intensity is the price of excellence.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.

I will demand a commitment to excellence and to victory, and that is what life is all about.