I came from somewhat of a musical family. I had an uncle on Broadway. My dad kind of knows how to play instruments. Although I always find it annoying when he does play an instrument.

I wanted to take up music so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.

It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.

I have this desire to just while away weeks months and years. It took me two years to make this record but that was with me trying to condense my process and not disappear down the rabbit hole with all the cool things I've collected. I could take 10 years and not explore everything I want to with these instruments.

It's cool to have instruments lying around because they give you different ideas.

Over and over again financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over they ignobly fail because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them.

Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by but often they change or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.

In the heat of the Russian summer a sleeping car is the most horrible instrument of martyrdom imaginable.

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

For the greater beauty of the instrument the balls representing the planets are to be of considerable bigness but so contrived that they may be taken off at pleasure and others much smaller and fitter for some purposes put in their places.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

In chess one cannot control everything. Sometimes a game takes an unexpected turn in which beauty begins to emerge. Both players are always instrumental in this.

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty is everything!

Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.

The body is your instrument in dance but your art is outside that creature the body.

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.

After my second-to-last record 'The Greatest' I had gone on tour for a while and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.

Obviously there's the seedy side of the strip club world and pole dancing. But pole dancing as an art form is really beautiful. It's been hyper-sexualized because it's associated with strippers but if you think about it just in terms of other kinds of dancing they're using an instrument to create these amazing dance forms.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

I walk into a kids' store and it's amazing the types of instruments - little squeaky things rattling things spinning tops.

Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm so the sooner it's off the better.

I believe we should encourage children to sing and play instruments from an early age.