“In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.”

Lovesick, bitter and hardened heart. Aching, waiting for life to start

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they’re hearing something other than what I’m hearing.

It’s incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

I used to edit myself. If something seemed super-simple I had to make it more complicated.

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I’ve been with all along, that’s where I really learn.

There’s so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you’re one thing, it’s hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

I’ve been lucky with the circle of people I’m playing with. We’ve played enough that there’s a language we talk with each other when we play.

“Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible.

For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being – old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

I do know the older I get, the more I’m referencing music I heard as a kid.

I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players.

Now I’m trying to let what’s in there come out and acknowledge where I come from. I’m trying to make it more. ..true.

I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn’t speak for themselves.

You have to expose part of yourself to create a character deep enough for readers to care about.

For all the things I’m losing I might aswell resign myself to try and make a change.

I’m a fake intellectual.

I don’t think there’s any question journalists have become targets, but then I think that – that anyone who tries to practice liberty becomes a target of fanatics.

There are takers, who are always trying to serve themselves; matchers, who are always trying to get equal benefit for themselves and others; and givers, who are always trying to help people.

People tend to have one of three ‘styles’ of interaction.

I try to turn a written thing, when I’m in trouble with it, into a spoken thing: I start imagining what I would say to someone if I were trying to tell the story or make the argument.