My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.

I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

The only thing that holds the government back from just going ballistic on us is the Second Amendment. When we become disarmed, it's over. It's over.

It is morally, politically and socially wrong for business as business or labor as labor to participate directly in politics.

As long as I'm in government, as long as I'm in politics, I will do everything in my power to fight back against those who seek to undermine Israel.

My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue and never make a national election any kind of referendum on Israel.