“I didn’t know Charlie Parker well, but I spent some time with him, and he was articulate and well-spoken with a lot of curiosity about music and the world. But the only way he seems to be depicted is as a junkie. And that’s not the full picture.”

Get up from the piano … Oscar is in the house. Who wants to be at the piano when Oscar is there? Find something else to do.

In all honesty, I think I just played what I felt was right for me. And I think I would have done the same thing, even if I’d been born later, when Charlie Parker was influencing everybody. The truth is, I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

At my age, I realize that my most precious possession is time, and I’ve got too much unfinished work to do to spend even a minute talking about myself.

He’s no Bill Clinton!

Without looking out of my window I could know the ways of heaven.

Suicide is man’s way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me – I quit.’

The way people come into your life when you need them, it’s wonderful and it happens in so many ways. It’s like having an angel. Somebody comes along and helps you get right.

If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached.

It’s insecurity that is always chasing you and standing in the way of your dreams.

The way you dress is the billboard that tells perceptive people how you feel about yourself.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn’t as good as a white child.