 Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with. |
| Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo. |
| You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others. |
| We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. |
| When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. |
| If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die. |
| The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity. |
| What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. |
| I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. |
| I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. |
| It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing. |
| You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good. |
| Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. |
| Saxophone is one thing, and music is another. |
| They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind. |
| Jazz is people's music, a collectivity. |
| Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it. |
| Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention. |
| When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all. |
| I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever. |
