“Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.”

That’s a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.

Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.

I believe in racial memory too. I’m sure I’ve got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.

It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules. It’s hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it.

I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.

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.

It’s a good time for black people to be alive.

If I want to take a particular form of blues somewhere else I have the equipment to do it but I never even thought of it.

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band’s lead singer, Eric Burdon. “So you’re the honky,” she said, “who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

My name sounds French but that’s just a stage name.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

Once I understood Bach’s music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.

The World is Large – Its beauty indescrible.

Why is it that you have more practice describing weaknesses than strengths? It’s not your fault they never went to the lengths to teach you how to value your strengths.

Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.

It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.

I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.

Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?