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" Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important. "

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" I'm not a psychiatrist. "

" When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out. "

" I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy said: 'Idiot, just put a flat on the third line and it's a key signature, you know?' "

" All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls. "

" I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music. "

" Cherish your mistakes, and you won't keep making them over and over again. It's the same with heartbreaks and girls and everything else. Cherish them, and they'll put some wealth in you. "

" When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older. "

" Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release. "

" I'd been in love before - I was always in love. "

" I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe. "

" You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F. "

" I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap. "

" If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture. "

" My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade. "

" I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. "

" I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages. "

" My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store. "

" I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.' "

" Young people should travel, and they don't. You can't know if you don't go. "

" After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument. "

" To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft. "

" I never felt like I had a mother. "

" Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.' "

" Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling. "

" I never cared about money or fame, and I don't care now. I follow the groove, and money always follows. "

" We spent most of our life almost like street rats just running around the street until we were ten years old. "

" Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country. "

" I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from. "

" Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand. "

" I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is. "