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.

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.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

We need to have a culture that says 'the less energy you can use to be comfortable, the better off you are and the better you should feel about yourself'.

Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren't particularly youth culture.

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.

Towns are suffering from all these things, we should unite until we are all satisfied, man cannot be killing each other as if we were animals, as if we had no culture; that is a lack of culture.

You're a Catholic in Italy when you're born, it's unthinkable to stop being Catholic. You just take the rules a lot more seriously, because it pervades your culture.

Sex and drugs were simply not discussed in our culture at that time.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there's no culture of complaint.

I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

And there are so many people in the third world suffering so horribly right now, and we are so focused on ourselves and our culture that a lot of things are showing up in our culture that are making it impossible for us to focus on others. We're so self-focused.