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If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.
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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
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It takes a long time to sound like yourself.
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
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The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play
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See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.
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Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
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First you imitate, then you innovate.
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When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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My future starts when I wake up every morning.
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
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I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
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If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.
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Play what you know and then play above that