“I never felt like I had a mother.”

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.

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

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

I wonder if one day I will ever feel as though I am not hard to love.

We can not all love in the same way – for the feeling would be called ordinariness instead. And of that, the world has too much already.

Our only consolation, as we feel our strength failing us, is to feel that we may help those who come after us to do more and to do better than ourselves.

An eternity caught within a feeling is called love.

I threw up all my feelings for you – I couldn’t keep them down any longer; You taste like lies And it makes me sick.

I remain busy constantly on the move, For I just don’t like how I feel when I’m standing still.

That feeling when you know you’re not meant to be together, but you’re not ready to let go.

I feel the silence with my chaotic heart.