And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

To some degree, yeah, because I have to play a certain number of originals that might be considered avant-garde material. I realize though, that only a few people in the audience actually know what that music is, or understand it.

So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white - everybody.

Black music has become a commercial commodity. Live performances are not so accessible as they were previously. It use to be possible to go to the bar on the corner and hear music. It was available for a fifteen cent beer.

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole.

I find that here in the States, audiences are generally less knowledgeable, from the cognitive point of view, though they are emotionally more receptive.

So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on a guy like me. It turned out to be a very symbiotic partnership. I learned a lot from him.

You get a show where people are jumping up and dancing, but it's not a critical event in the sense of profound catharsis. Essentially it's celebratory.

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

Today, music is visual.

In rap music even though the element of poetry is very strong so is the element of the drum the implication of the dance. Without the beat its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards.

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

At one point I had to shove as much food in my body as possible to pack on calories. My trainer wanted me to do six meals a day and not go two hours without eating. If I would cheat on eating one day, I could tell - I'd drop a few pounds.

I still feel like my best surfing is ahead of me.

If your daily life seems poor do not blame it blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches for the Creator there is no poverty.

I have always let the lack of Indian actors in the industry drive me, not hold me back. I remember an agent in L.A. telling me a few years ago that an Indian actor wouldn't ever make it in Hollywood, but my ethnicity has helped me.

I get told a lot that I'm kind of carving my own path. That there are not many actors who are out and are able to play straight and gay, and everyone's OK with it.

The guy who could be me, but he knows when to draw the line, is John Cena. John Cena can rock 'n' roll, let me tell you.

In fact, the individual outlook becomes less and less valuable and more and more harmful unless it is transmitted into the corporate outlook.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

When we can't dream any longer we die.

I'm a baseball player who likes to enjoy himself and leave everything to God. He knows what'll happen.

All people have dignity. There's nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit.

In the real world, answers may not be clear cut. There will be messy choices, and you're not going to be able to construct a policy response in a neat and tidy way. Being able to listen to other people, even as you stay true to your principles, that's how you actually succeed.

The impression I have of Justice Warren is that he was looking for the just result in a case regardless of fixed dogma or principles and I like to think that I'm in that mold.

There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym - it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house.

I want to be able to be a father to my kids, where I've never seen my father, but my kids can see me whenever they want, so that was broken.

When companies are trying to find a state to locate a new business or factory, they look at a number of factors - including tax structure, employment base, infrastructure, education system, etc. One of the most important is a strong and sound health care system in the communities where employees will work and live.

I was very focused, driven, rigid, work-oriented. I didn't care about having a family or making a home. I didn't think about kids. It's not that I didn't want those things; I just didn't think about them.

For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France.

Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset.

When you take a pitch and line it somewhere, it's like you've thought of something and put it there with beautiful clarity.

My agent says that I'm a 'repeat business guy.' If you hire me to come do a movie, I'll be on time, know all my material, be ready to go, have a good attitude. I'm here to work, so I get hired over and over again by the same producers. If you just be a team player on set you can work so much more often.