Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

Playing "bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

A man is a god in ruins.

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

A problem is your chance to do your best.

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

A problem is a chance for your to do your best.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

There are simply two kinds of music good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good its successful if it doesnt it has failed.

By & large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.

San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world.

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is.

There is no intolerance in the world so great as the intolerance of tolerance, and no bigotry so excessive as the bigotry of the image breaker. To praise the devil is second nature. To praise God is an education.

If somebody had told me in the 1980s that Gerry Adams would shake hands with Ian Paisley or Peter Robinson I would have said put that man in a white suit and lock him up in a padded cell.

The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.

My passion for ideas is not matched with a passion for partisan or electoral politics.

I have always been a writer of letters, and of long ones; so, when I first thought of writing a book in the form of letters, I knew that I could do it quickly and easily.

It shows courage, and it shows commitment to move beyond the status-quo politics of rhetoric, which is all the Cuban-American community has received from any party for the last half century.

I discover real-time news far more often on Facebook than on Google News or a regular Google search.

Writing is always a process of discovery. I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There's a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

I would love to be a guys' girl, but they always end up falling in love with me, so I'm a girls' girl instead. I've tried having friendly relationships with men, but it ends up being impossible, and I've been around the block too many times not to see it coming.

My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.

When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.

A goal or decision without a deadline has no urgency. It has no real beginning or end.

I think the federal government really should be supporting Louisiana and ensuring that every person from that area has an opportunity to vote on what will occur in the area.

Hip hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing.

When you make the playoffs, it's like you've done your job for the team. I've got that moment in my mind all the time, and I want to be there again.

'The Replacements' is where I met Jon Favreau, and we just clicked like, you know, like kids at a camp. And he wrote my next movie, which was 'Made.'

They've got so many Latin players we're going to have to get a Latin instructor up here.

Bill de Blasio was swept to the New York mayoralty on the promise of getting Gracie Mansion out from under the thumb of corporate elites.

If it's a close election, then it's better for the Supreme Court to pick the president, whether or not he won the election. It's just insane on its face.

Typically, when there are corporate habits that undermine individuals, it has emerged without any sort of central planning. Nobody sits down and says, 'I'm going to create an evil habit for this corporation.'