“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.”

China’s got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain’t right.

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.’

My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.

It takes a certain amount of guts to go to your class reunions.

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

I tell the boy in my class that no means no and he laughs in my face – says no means change my mind.

Working-class Americans want a clear champion, and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.

My mum and I do cardio kickboxing classes together.

I went to an all-girls’ Catholic school for, like, six years during the time when kids actually had handwriting class. I’ve always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well.