I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.

I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.

We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about.

I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who aren't exposed to creative music.

I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.

There's like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It's nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.

It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.

I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance.

I can write a song about my hero Che Guevara and call it 'Song for Che.'

I don't sing now, because I had polio when I was 15, bulbar polio. This was when the epidemic was happening. And I was lucky that it didn't affect my lungs or my legs. It went to my face and kind of paralyzed my vocal chords, and I wasn't able to sing. And they said I was very lucky that I would get over it, which I did.

I have a very clear picture of what I want to do and what I feel is important as far as my contribution or my appreciation and respect for this life that we're living, and to try to make it better. I can't feel that I'm making it better playing commercial music, and I never could, and I never will.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.

I want to expand jazz; I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.

I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually, I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.

My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. That's what they called it back then. They were friends with Roy Acuff and the Delmore Brothers and the Carter Family. And all of my brothers and sisters who were older than me started on the show, after they were big enough to hold a guitar and sing.

When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don't - there's no bass part, there's not that much depth. That's why I'm attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It's like playing in a rainforest.

You can't be at your full creative power if you are sedated.

The bass no matter what kind of music youre playing it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops the bottom kind of drops out of everything.

That's the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.

Touching people is very rewarding to me.

I'm a big fan of Beyonce and Rihanna. I've listened to Beyonce all my life, and she's a big influence on me.

I wouldn't mind starting to ride some more if I had a really good horse to just work a little bit with every day.

Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.

I came from a big family... a big family of Southerners.

I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer not the other way around.

Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated you need twenty five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music.

Partly because I get such astonishingly nice fans.

When I was two and a half or three, my mom got a call from someone asking if wanted to go on an audition. I ended up getting the job; it was a commercial for Hasbro. It was my first audition and first commercial. I just had to smile and laugh and dance around.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

I was brought up to reuse things.

I strongly support European sanctions against Mugabe and his ruling clique. We must do all in our power to help the people of Zimbabwe achieve their freedom and prosperity once again.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.

I was digging in the backyard to get my own clay and making pottery. And then I started taking pictures and built my own darkroom. I would go out at six in the morning and just take pictures.

This is me. Don't judge, don't hate. I am who I am, I'm who God made me too be, an angel with a few scars and broken hearts and a voice that should be heard. I'm a solider and a fighter, I fight for love and I fight for those who need an angel too.

Dont open umbrellas indoors at least if you dont want to upset the sun gods.

If you have to be a one-hit wonder, then 'San Francisco' is the one to have.

I'm making a record that's half stripped down acoustic which is the way I perform a lot and half of it is very produced. It's really hard to keep music simple but I was trying to keep it simple and focus on one or two instruments and vocals.