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

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.

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.

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.

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.

The disciplined Christian will be very careful what sort of counsel he seeks from others. Counsel that contradicts the written Word is ungodly counsel. Blessed is the man that walketh not in that.

God always answers prayers. Sometimes it’s ‘yes.’ Sometimes the answer is ‘no.’ Sometimes it’s ‘you gotta be kidding.

If our circumstances find us in God, we shall find God in all our circumstances.

I know deep hurt. But I also know deep hope. Sometimes God’s power is shown as much in preventing things as it is in making them happen. We may never know why. But we can always know and trust the Who.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?

If you see your brother in need, it doesn’t matter if you already gave somewhere else. You should be open to the idea of God using you to meet your brother’s unexpected need.

It constantly happens that the Lord permits a soul to fall so that it may grow humbler.

I’ve got this amazing relationship with God that is better than life, itself, so marvelous, so wonderful that everything else can fall apart and I’m okay.