The melody is the most important thing that must stay in the minds of the people who listen to you. No matter how many notes you play, you can't let them forget what the song is.

No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity.

People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

The greatest guitar player in the world today for me is Paco de Lucia, who is actually Spanish.

I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.

The less one remembers about the day before, the more the new day will be unfettered by triviality.

Never give up on a good thing, never give up, never give up!

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.

The first time I tried to sing along with my guitar, everybody in the studio booed. They all said it wouldn't work.

I like Simon Cowell - look at how many great artists have come out of the U.K. because of him.

Love songs are one of the great essences of life, the only thing thats lasting.

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.