“Artt Frank is my all-time favorite drummer. He always seems to know where I’m going.”

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play.

I soon became aware that there wasn’t enough time or opportunity to kiss all the girls in the world. The best thing is to stay cool – just be choosy and wait for the right opportunity.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

People said I’d never make 35, then I’d never make 40, 45; now I’m almost 50, so Im beginning to think maybe they might be wrong.

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you’re my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart?

I like to play in the deep register. I was never a high-note specialist. My range goes from the bottom of the horn up to around C or D. High D is about it for me, about two-and-a-half octaves, I think. But in these two-and-a-half octaves, I can say everything I have to say.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

It takes a pretty good drummer to be better than no drummer at all.

How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?

In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed:.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us.

And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.