Nowadays it's hard to get somebody to invest the time - everybody wants to be famous rather than be a good musician.
I always want to set myself a challenge by doing something no-one would expect me to do! But, having said that, I don't feel as a musician you can steer too far away from what you normally do.
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.
[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
Being as versatile as I am, I take offense to the notion that no serious musician would not be doing a late night talk show gig. One has to be open enough in other areas to be able to contribute to a show like this.
As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.
But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.
Music is a universal language insofar as you don't need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music. It doesn't matter what their music is, you can find something that you can play together, with what their culture is. The dialect part of it comes into play, but nothing like the differentiation that language sets up, for example.
A lot of my friends are musicians or artists, and their talent always pushes me to think creatively.
You've got certain guys that just want to be famous and then you've got the real musicians that just love playing music.
My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician.
I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.
Growing up, I fantasized about being a rock musician and that somehow it would be really easy. I didn't realize that it's so much work.
Like the musician, the painter, the poet and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made.
I never looked at being a musician any different than waking up one day and wanting to be an accountant or a lawyer.
A part of being a female musician is kind of getting past your looks and just honing in on the music.
There was a lot of stuff happening in Havana that was being heard and appreciated by New Orleans musicians because of this situation. And vice versa.
Music and visual performance have to influence each other. Designers and musicians have to be the nexus of all things pop culture, so I think about designers when I'm making music.
A musician's biography is written wherever he performs; everybody hears what he is playing.