I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.

Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.

I told her, 'I'll be there -- if you wake me up! Just let the phone ring a lot.'

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.