“The artist must say it without saying it.”

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

I don’t need time, I need a deadline.

There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.

My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?

There is no art when one does something without intention.

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.

Simplicity is a most complex form.

Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.

Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts that could not exist without it.

Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understand each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings.

The language of psychiatry is a monologue of reason about madness.

Love was learning to read your vulnerability like a foreign language.

Through poems, I speak the language of my soul and the emotions of my body onto paper.

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

No matter what color, race, language you speak, or profession you practice, as women, Empowering yourselves must always come first.