“I look back and say, “This must have been somebody else.” I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.”

The process is the most beautiful part.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

It’s the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.

Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

My grandmother had this high-tech security system – a rusty nail she used to lock the door.

The only music I don’t like is bad music.

I’m just a musician and a record producer.

A lot of the guys were like that – Oscar Pettiford – they just took me under their wing, and that’s why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.

Let’s not get too full of ourselves. Let’s leave space for God to come into the room.

The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. ‘Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it’s done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.’

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.

If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You’re dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, – all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, – who is good? Not that men are ignorant, – what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. In the hours of our keenest sufferings all are thrown wholly on themselves for consolation.

I don’t like age barriers. I don’t like when people treat you differently when they find out how old you are.

I shall not grow conservative with age.

Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!

I am above eighty years old … I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.

The only way to save Social Security is to raise the retirement age.

Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can’t see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.