“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 look forward to doing my own show, not someone else’s. That’s always been my dream.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

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.

You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It’s hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

Our players get scrutinized pretty hard at Alabama.

We wouldn’t be able to survive. We would have a hard time surviving if we were transported to the time when dinosaurs were around.

It’s hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

I throw so hard because I sit and wait for that perfect moment.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

See, winners embrace hard work.