“Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.”

If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

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.

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.

Was Ty Cobb psychotic throughout his baseball career? The answer is yes.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)? Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought?

Suicide is not an answer, it’s destruction.

Do I feel good enough? Do I feel big enough? Do I feel sexy enough?” Some days, the answer is ‘yes’ but sometimes it’s not.

I pray and wait for an answer in pictures, words or ideas.