“Never have your wallet with you onstage. It’s bad luck. You shouldn’t play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.”

There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.

I guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have.

I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch.

I can’t listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You’re just processing too much, there’s no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.

When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

We are all just monkeys with money and guns.

I dunno when I started writing really. I was, like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sex. ‘occasionally’ , stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls.

Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it.

I don’t have a drinking problem ‘Cept when I can’t get a drink.

I’m just trying to make a buck like everyone else.

I admit that I ain’t no angel, I admit that I ain’t no saint – I’m selfish and I’m cruel and I’m blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they’re so hard to find.

There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.

If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it’s good. I’m not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don’t cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don’t stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you’ll never see it again.

If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.

I did my time in the jail of your arms.

You know, we just buy music now. We don’t make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it’s so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.

Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.

Being known for musicals is a great thing.

Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we’re one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!

Music is a universal language insofar as you don’t need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music.

You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

I’m an ‘evolve or die’ kind of a musician. I think it’s cool to try new things.

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, “I have to write some of my kind of songs now.”