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Being a musician is a noble profession.

A musician is a professional, whether he or she is successful or not. The profession itself must be regarded as a stable job.

When you play with great musicians, whether they're schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes. It comes down to people's personalities and individual energies.

All musicians start out with ideals but hanging on to them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity. Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.

To be a good musician, you need to give people what they want, what they need.

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

Sometimes the picture that emerges of the man seems no longer to agree with our conception of the musician. In reality, however, there is a glorious unity.

The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.

A musician has to find a way to make his music mean something special - spiritually or however you can.