When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.

I think I have more in common with a carpenter than you might think. We're putting things together.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.