Listening to the stories told in jazz music and how those artists expressed their truths about the times and what they were dealing with is what struck me the most.

Once you see how powerful music is and how it can affect people, then you want to use it to impact the world.

My prayers are being answered for my career. These are prayers I've been praying for as a kid.

I consider each performance to be an intimate conversation between me and the audience members.

Surprisingly, the Eisenhower Memorial design contains almost none of the known Gehry-box of tricks. His giant etched chain-link curtain, first applied in 1979 to hide an ungracious parking garage at Santa Monica Place, is resurrected for Eisenhower to screen the equally graceless facade of the Department of Education.

The traditional story of economists has been to say education explains what the returns are to school. I say, 'Okay, that's fine, but what explains the education? How much is just a matter of my giving you a poor kid versus a rich kid?'

We were living in Denver, Colorado, and I was teaching high school. I asked the kids to write a short story, so I thought I should write some myself.

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.