After a while I thought it didn't make any sense to use a pick. It's kind of like typing with one finger on each hand instead of using all your fingers.

The simple things in life ground me and keep me focused so I'm able to do a good job with what is in front of me.

I thought people cared about music in a deep way, so I was writing to that spirit in people and in myself. It was me, thinking I knew what was up. Youth, who else can change the world?

The things I really learned, I learned from watching my parents. They take care of business. Always have.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

I really live a simple life and don't need very much to feel good and happy. Don't get me wrong; I believe you should get what you earn. Sometimes you have to fight for it.

Dad made it to Gold Shield Detective, so he always busted Robin, my oldest brother, and me. Always got caught, whatever we were doing.

I can pay my rent now. I guess I could always do that, but now I can get an apartment with heat.

I was playing violin for a long time, about 6 years. It takes a while. You need very patient people in your house when you have a violin.

I consider myself a serious musician. Doing a comedy show does not take away from that in any way.

After a while I thought it didn't make any sense to use a pick. It's kind of like typing with one finger on each hand instead of using all your fingers.

My love life doesn't stink; it's nonexistent.

I really worked with icons in the music business, which really had a strong effect on me. It wasn't just pick-up gigs.

James Brown is the reason I play guitar.

If you play jazz, then you play with your fingers. If you're playing rock, you use a pick. There's really no rhyme or reason to that other than that's just the way it has been.

It's shameful what's happening in this country in terms of what we deny our children.

I had the fortunate experience to play with people from different schools of music. Sam Rivers is from the fundamentalist school of music.

The worst part is doubt. When you doubt yourself, which we are taught to do, you get lost.

I love both my parents dearly.

It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend.

Serious musicians are finding it harder and harder to have a voice in the world of music these days.

Being as versatile as I am, I take offense to the notion that no serious musician would not be doing a late night talk show gig. One has to be open enough in other areas to be able to contribute to a show like this.

The belief that we are what the media says we are, what people perceive we are, is soon to be what we think we are. We are treated based on this warped perception. It is hard to get away from it.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.

I am blessed to have Mom and Dad.

Inspiration is one thing and you can't control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Good luck means, work hard. Keep up the good work.

Sometimes I wonder if I got lulled into not wanting things because I grew up black in this country.

My love life is like everyone else's - great, and then terrible.

In most places that are rich in guitar culture, everyone uses their fingers, like in Spain or Africa. In Japan there are string instruments played that way. It is not until you get in the States that you find people using picks.

I wish I could sing. I love singers, but I am way too shy. Scares the hell out of me.

I want someone who is open-minded, dedicated to whatever she is doing and isn't afraid to say I love you. As for looks, she shouldn't have three heads. I want a regular human being.

People see my current success but don't realize I've worked hard to get where I am. I used to clean garbage off the Philadelphia docks and put a lot of time into developing my music.

The worst part is doubt. When you doubt yourself which we are taught to do you get lost.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

What we're doing is fun - if you have any sense of humor at all!

It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

You've got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.

My music is so often like a lullaby I write to myself to make sense of things I can't tie together, or things I've lost, or things I'll never have.

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

It's not so much the amount of tax we pay - it's the sense that our pocket's being picked without our knowing what's going on.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.