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.

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

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.

I've had my stint at Columbus. My family has been right by my side throughout, and that's exactly what I wanted. I found my happiness.

Just follow your joy. Always. I think that if you do that, life will take you on the course that it's meant to take you.

We have arrived at that point of time in which we are forced to see our own humiliation, as a nation, and that a progression in this line cannot be a productive of happiness, private or public.

Personally, it's a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.