It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience.

After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit' and 'La Cretion du Monde.' I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, 'Scaramouche.'

I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

I started growing up in a hurry and taking a lot of the philosophy I'd heard from church as a kid a lot more seriously - especially the Ten Commandments - and wondering how 'Thou shalt not kill' could be so absolutely ignored. It took me until I was in my 40s to write what I was thinking as a young soldier.

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.

I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you've got to know how great he was.

If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

If there's a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I'll work 'till exhausted.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.

My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.

My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

Jazz stands for freedom.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

With her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,' Rooney Mara gave fashion fans a new Gothic-chic muse.

That's the story of life - when you start enjoying people, it's always too late.

I'm not comparing myself at all to him, but I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know.

When you stop chasing your dreams your dreams start chasing you.

One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono.

They certainly did. They tried to make her look like a "nut case" and they succeeded to some extent.

All of my friends are really good dancers, which was initially why I never danced - we'd go out, and they would kill it, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I'm just gonna sit at the bar.'

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.

I love driving fast. I grew up in Germany; we have the Autobahn here, where we can drive without a speed limit. And throughout my 20s, I always had fast cars, and I always went to the maximum. Like, my average cruising speed was 250 km/hr.

Anger is often more hurtful than the injury that caused it.

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.

You know, I'm a big comic book fan. As a kid I used to collect them until there was a horrible mudslide in Hollywood and I lost my collection, but I was also at an early age the voice of 'Jonny Quest;' it was a cartoon; so I am kind of a latent fan boy.

I'm in New York a lot. And every time I'm in New York, I'm out every night - it's a bit much. After a week, I'm ready to go home.

I'm not a fan of people romanticizing their loved ones in death.

Although it's the second largest country in the world, our useful area has been reduced. Our immigration policy is disgusting: We plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth.

Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.

I'm a grown woman. The haters are definitely wrong if they think I care.

In my clinical practice, the one diagnosis I always dreaded giving was Alzheimer's. Billions have been spent on research, but there's still neither a cure nor an effective treatment.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.