“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.”

It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

The relationship with a producer and an artist is really special. It’s got to be love and respect, amazing mutual respect for each other, because that’s what makes a good record.

I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.

Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.

I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!

Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you’re supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

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

When you’re over the hill, that’s when you pick up speed.

I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.”

If I don’t have a mother, I’ll let music be my mother.

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.

All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying “Nobody can put a boundary around me.”

I was married for 36 years but now I’m free.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

I remember when I was 11, I did some Kung-fu demonstrations in Hong Kong in 1974.

There is no doubt that we live in an age of unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, technological advance where the speed of advance so often outstrips the necessary ethical considerations.

Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

I think we need to recover the depth, the subtlety, the generosity of imagination, the respect for wisdom that so marked Islam in its great ages.

I actually get a lot of messages with people saying, ‘What’s a Marvin Gaye?’ and, I mean… Oh, wow. I must be getting old, because someone who was born in 2004 just asked me what a Marvin Gaye was.

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