A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.

The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don't listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don't listen anyway. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear.

The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music.

If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so.

Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest.

The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula.

My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.

It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.

If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn't be fun; but since I'm like me, it's okay.

I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show.

I suspect that we might actually start selling some records with these artists in about 10 years. Some the people who invested, they're a little tight-because it's a lot of money to start up a company.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't.

We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

I like to make records sound good. I'm more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what's the point?

There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over.

If it's not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what's the point of playing Terrapin Station?

One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.

When you're dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What's the point of getting lofty?

I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.

Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.

Love is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears; hatred is nothing.

I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.

You're going to be hearing a lot about one scrappy president.

I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.

We suspect Dr. Clutterbuck's sense of hearing must be injured: for him the 'ear trumpet' magnifies but distorts sound, rendering it less distinct than before.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.

One of my sensory problems was hearing sensitivity, where certain loud noises, such as a school bell, hurt my ears. It sounded like a dentist drill going through my ears.

Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.

I answer a fan with a hearing heart first.

Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.

Information comes through to me in 3 basic ways seen, hearing, and feeling the energy of the person that's crossed over. In which it is a symbolic type of language.

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

I dare say that a majority of the American people think that having a fair hearing on an issue of importance in our relations with Mexico is extremely important to our national interest, as well as theirs.

Hearing, which, by the motion of the air, informs us of the motion of sounding or vibrating bodies.

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style.