...I have great hopes for the possibility of a dynamic universalism that respects all our people.

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

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 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.

Everybody in America is angry about something.

Most African Americans, especially the men and women from my generation, would accept the nationalist gambit that says only European Americans can be racists, which is an interesting gambit.