“I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.”

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

I’m a real rebel with a cause.

When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.

I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.

Music is the center of my life.

That’s a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.

I believe in racial memory too. I’m sure I’ve got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.

It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules. It’s hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it.

I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be.

It’s a good time for black people to be alive.

I try to work out my mind more these days. I try to eat right. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I take the skin off chicken. But I’m not on no special diet. I like my steak and potatoes, ice cream, doughnuts.

I’ve never been a manipulator, even in my bachelor days. I never wanted to do things to people that could catch up with me later on.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

But I must go, and I must do this thing, because my Lord will have it so. Rather now than tomorrow, and tomorrow than the day after!

I’m changing every day as far as this rap thing. I’m learning new things. I’m getting bigger by the day.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.