“What happens when you get a big break and you haven’t prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. I see it happen all the time.”

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.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That’s the soul of a country.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

The worst mistake you can make is walking away from the person who actually stood there and waited for you.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.