Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

I'm seeking to have an art that is engaged as a way for saying, 'Hurray for unity.

I have learned through time that not everyone is interested in the kinds of things that fascinate me.

For the most basic assumption that dictated my early attempts to respond to creative music commentary was the mistaken belief that western journalists had some fundamental understanding of black creativity—or even western creativity—but this assumption was seriously in error.

Growing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something.

I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me.