"The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel."

"They take your drawers off for you, they show your ass, they sell bullshit, they call themselves 'niggaz' and the wom…"

"I had a trumpet, but I didn't want to be a trumpet player. I wanted to be some type of athlete or in some type of sch…"

"I always believed in working hard. ...That’s something that my father and my great-uncle would always tell me. My gre…"

"I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice."

"That's democratic leadership. It's like a flock of geese. They make the calls from the back. ...If you really are lea…"

"The level of corruption we're seeing now... I'm a nonpartisan attacker of the corruption I see. I've been doing it fo…"

"[I]n jazz you can plug the base amp in, the drummer can play loud, one soloist can play 400 choruses, and the next on…"

"That's what I have to say as a band leader. I can't say, "Well, I'm going to solo on every tune. Every time somebody …"

"[W]e're in trouble right now, but... a doctor doesn't go into a place where a lot of people are sick and say, "Man, a…"