“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.”

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The love and trust your kids have for you is something beautiful.

Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Together we can change the lives of many children.

The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.

Children have their rights denied every single day. We want to build a world where every child is in school and learning, safe from harm and able to fulfill their potential, and we know you do too. It’s time to put children back on the agenda.

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.

If a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me – there is nothing between.