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" I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way. "

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" I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world. "

" Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves. "

" Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene. "

" I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking. "

" My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable. "

" You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician. "

" Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study? "

" Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here. "

" That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think. "

" Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak. "

" While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed. "

" It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man. "

" Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me. "

" The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle. "

" I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep. "

" I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day. "

" I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on. "

" The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence. "

Self-Confidence

" You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form. "

" I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn. "

" In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate. "

" At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated. "

Graduate School

" I've got more low notes than I had when I started. "

" I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about. "

" Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown. "

" I know how hard it's been for me to get my thing out there. "

" You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies. "

" I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could. "

" I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road. "

" You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear. "