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.

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.

I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

There are a lot of people out there who think that I am their worst enemy, and I don't even care if these people exist.

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.

I'm not the type of person who goes through all this effort for a movie, and then doesn't care if anybody sees it. I want them to see it, and I want them to see it on the big screen.

On January 1, 2006, Medicare will begin to offer a prescription drug benefit, and for the first time, it will place an emphasis on preventive care and early treatment of disease.

I wanted to be an actress. In college I was a serious feminist and very political. I was determined to get one thing out of my career and that was respect. I didn't want money. I didn't care about fame.

There are certain promises you make that are more sacred than anything that happens in a court of law, I don't care how many Bibles you put your hand on.

The British press have written some nasty and spiteful things about the way I look which used to affect me quite badly when it was new to me but luckily, I've learned to ignore the comments. why do they even care about how I look?

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

I did as much research as I could and I took ownership of this illness, because if you don't take care of your body, where are you going to live?

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I think women are natural caretakers. They take care of everybody. They take care of their husbands and their kids and their dogs, and don't spend a lot of time just getting back and taking time out.

If they respect the craft and what we're doing and they bring something to the table and they work hard, I don't care what you do as your side job or as your day job.