A lot of times, we look at jazz in eras. How can we not keep those eras separate and think of the language as one complete continuum? It's all interrelated, and it's all evolutionary.

My grandfather, Arthur Baskerville, he played and still plays a little bit piano and trombone, and so when I was a kid, I always heard jazz around the house, but I also went to his gigs, whether it be a Saturday brunch in my hometown Columbus, Ohio. We'd go and hear him play with some of the local musicians.

When I see young people interested in music. I always look out for that passion in their eyes. You never know where that might lead.

I consider myself very fortunate. I mean, I think there's that old saying, 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' and I just have such a passion for jazz music and playing the piano that I just find a way to make it work, so to speak. Fortunately, I have so far.

My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time. They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.

I don't find acting to be a particularly noble way to make a living. I'm not saving anybody's life, I'm not a teacher, I'm not working for UNICEF. I don't think I'm some big deal.

If you observe children with sufficient objectivity as they grow into the world, then you will perceive that children's temporal bodies are still not fully connected with the spirit-soul. The task of education, understood in a spiritual sense, is to bring the soul-spirit into harmony with the temporal body.

Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they're very different approaches.