“When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.”

Excellence isn’t an act, it’s a habit.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Editing while you’re writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that’s the bottom line.

I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it.

You cannot get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F.

My son is a hip-hop producer.

It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

The relationship with a producer and an artist is really special. It’s got to be love and respect, amazing mutual respect for each other, because that’s what makes a good record.

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.

When my father passed away two or three years ago, I didnt listen to music for four days – thats a long time for me.

Like my father, I believe that nonviolence is the antidote to what he called ‘the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism.’ These three evils were consuming our hopes for community in 1964, and, fifty years later, we remain divided because of their festering effects.

Often, I am asked, ‘What was your father like?’ or, ‘What would he think?’ These are very difficult questions to answer, as I was so very young when I lost my father.

My dad is Irish. I spent my childhood going back and forth between Ireland and America.

My sensei was a British karate champion named Brian Fitkin. He was my mentor and because I had a hard relationship with my dad, he became a father figure to me.

In the end, I still have the same hope as my father – that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the last word.

I think people couldn’t really put me in [one race]. I wasn’t Mexican, I wasn’t white, I wasn’t black, I wasn’t Asian… I wasn’t anything, and I didn’t really fit into anybody’s group. My dad is Mexican, and my mom is French and Danish.

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.