“I dont listen to my own records a lot. Once in a while – to check out my mistakes. Because you can always see a spot or two in the record where you could have done better. So you more or less study this way.”

I used to live at the Cecil Hotel, which was next door to Minton’s [Playhouse]. We used to jam just about every night when we were off. Lester [Young], Don Byas and myself – we would meet there all the time and like, exchange ideas. It wasn’t a battle, or anything.

I’ve been back in New York a year and a half now. Before that I was on the West Coast for five years.

If you try all different styles that are in vogue, I think you con yourself. Me, I just stick by my guns; I don’t want to play out of another man’s bag.

I like to play things that people understand, or maybe tunes that they could recognize. And so — I play for the people, just as much as for myself. Because, as I say, I still like to play.

I don’t want to play out of another man’s bag.

There’s no comparison between the two. You hear things in New York you don’t hear anywhere else. Unless these guys go out. Quite a few make it out to the Coast. Of course, you can’t stay in New York for ever. You have to move.

Like every other place, I guess, Kansas City was quite a different city when I was a youngster there. They had quite a few clubs, and we had what we used to call jam sessions every night.

I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. ‘Richard Pryor,’ I wrote for – gosh – over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that.

My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad.

There are so many great animals in our local shelters that people don’t really know about.

there are only two ways to make a lot [of money] while you’re young: One is to entertain the public; and the other is to cheat it.

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.

I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days.

I am concerned because even in the past two years that were the jubilee years, I have seen evident signs which show that the people are still in great difficulties, and there are things that still need to be remedied and looked after in many areas.

At the end of the day, she noticed that everybody around her was happy, too- so she didn’t quit after all. She decided to come to work happy instead. Two years later, she’s still on the job, radiating happiness and love.