“Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.”

Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits.

Our time here is magic! It’s the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It’s the only space.

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.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups…I want to speak to their souls.

The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.

My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there’s no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am – my faith, my knowledge, my being.

I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate [the two] is itself a very political intention.