“I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be.”

Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I’d rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I’ll leave it to them.

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They’re not easy to know, so if you don’t tell them how you feel, you’re not going to get anywhere, I feel.

My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That’s how I see my voice.

I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

Desegregation is a joke.

The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else’s. That’s always been my dream.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

I’m a real rebel with a cause.

I’ve led a career of having to take work to see my family, over picking and choosing, instead of ‘I need food on the table and I don’t know how I’m going to pay the mortgage.’

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it – low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion – and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national.

If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won’t see the Buddha.

The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.

People who don’t see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

I cross out words so you will see them more

To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing, and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding.

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.