“It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?”

If you don’t know what to play, play nothing.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

If you’re going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

There are no wrong notes.

When kids don’t learn about their own heritage in school, they just don’t care about school… But you won’t see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can’t do what we do is because they’re so comfortable doin’ what they do.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

That’s the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Always listen for what you can leave out.

My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

Laughing and crying are really similar – what happens to your body. It’s a very similar process in your diaphragm. Like a musician, you have to do your scales once in a while and warm up your voice.

I’m definitely musician and storyteller. But I always like to take an active role in things I care about socially and environmentally.

I’m in a position I never imagined I’d be in as a musician. Bob Dylan built an audience through recording and live shows. The opportunities for an artist today are totally different.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that’s the center of it, that is it. It’s almost like there’s something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you’re a songwriter that sings your material.

If I wasn’t a musician… I think I’d just be endlessly traveling.

As a musician or a performer, you’re meant to know what you’re about, but it’s ridiculous that someone 14 would have any idea of what they’re about.

I wouldn’t buy somebody’s album on a dare if they called him a musician’s musician. I don’t write to be a writer’s writer. I don’t want to be like the little-magazine writer.