Friedrich Nietzsche

Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Never play anything the same way twice.

I wanted to do the music, but not at the expense of being happy.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

[Ben Taylor] He is an interesting combination of the two of us. His voice box is more like mine but the way his tongue sits in his mouth, and the way he pronounces words, is just like James Taylor.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

Music to me is like breathing. I don’t get tired of breathing, I don’t get tired of music.

All I play is truth and emotion.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they’re here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.