I would find myself backing away from all of the 'isms,' all of the communities. I have always been able to be misused by every community But that is OK. I would rather be misused than neglected.

The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.

My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.

Evolution is the phenomenon of change and the challenge of the next time cycle will involve the creation of constructs that will provide the kind of dynamic knowledge base that can assist the challenges of tomorrow (involving both fundamental and extended information).

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.

I had never thought that I would be involved in narrative structures. As a young guy, I was more interested in abstract modeling. But as I got older, I began to see that there was no reason to limit myself to any intellectual or conceptual postulate, when in fact I'm a professional student of music.

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