“You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.”

It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.

Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.

A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.

Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.

Every man prays in his own language.

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.

I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?

I get embarrassed listening to my last CDs. I’ve got a lot of work to do, let’s put it that way.

This search for perfection – which is a search for divinity – is nothing more than the failure to accept our existence the way it is.

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It’s almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.

You don’t have to be any more talented, any richer, any slimmer, any smarter, any more or less of anything to partner with God. All you have to be is willing to be used by him in everyday way

We have to get our states to adopt what are called “renewable portfolio standards” pledging to use a lot of renewable energy by 2015 or 2020. We have to work with businesses and shops to get them engaged in the same way.

I hope to keep entertaining in some way until I can’t physically entertain any longer. It’s what I was born to do, and I love this profession.

No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers.