If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying..

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do..

The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up..

Music is the art of all the invisible things that are real. Art, emotion, spiritual essence, consciousness - these things are hard to prove. Music he….

Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now..

As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process i….

Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love..

Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note..

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can….

Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed..

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance..

How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life,….

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. ….

The best way to be, is to do..

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions t….

It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a ….

We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word..

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician.

If you want to be different, do something different..

The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is t….

Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk..