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.

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time.

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

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.