I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'

I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.

I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.

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

We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.

I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world.

The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.

It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.

I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.

I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits.

A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.

You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.

I don't really have a more intellectualized approach. After the fact, I can sure talk about stuff a lot - but when I make decisions, I really just follow what sounds good to me.

I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?

There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.

We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.

Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.

Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.

When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.

You can never predict what the specific shape of your life is going to be, and you won't really know its general shape until, God willing, you're advanced in years and you have the time and opportunity to look back in a coherent way and see what your life was about.

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.

Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.

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.

There are incredible musicians around the world.

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

My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.

I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.

Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do.

Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown.

You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.

Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.

If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.

It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.

Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them.

You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.

I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road.

The idea is to be unrestrained by categories.

That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.

Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.

Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that.

Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.

I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.

Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study?

Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides.