“They say a blind hog will find the acorn one day.”

I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.

Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.

I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!

Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you’re supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive – but that was totally subconscious.

When you’re over the hill, that’s when you pick up speed.

I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.”

If I don’t have a mother, I’ll let music be my mother.

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.

All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying “Nobody can put a boundary around me.”

I was married for 36 years but now I’m free.

You have to know that your real home is within.

I’m never in my life going to do a record that’s a tribute to myself. I don’t need it.

Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.

Writing is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

An eye for an eye. We are all blind.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.

Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.

Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.