I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.

I've struggled more with guys, depression drugs, family and career than I ever have with my illness. I'm not an innocent and I'm not a child.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

We're not at a point in time to be taking chances with children and young people in the church. The Holy Father himself said... there is no room in the priesthood or religious life for someone who has abused a child. I think he's right.

I was always made aware of inequality in society, that there was a class system. In Somalia, we have clan structures. My mother's family is ethnically not Somali, and so we spoke often about what it meant to be 'other' in that way.