I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?

You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature.

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?

That's the clarinet I used to use... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything.

People ask what those women saw in me. Let's face it, I wasn't a bad-looking stud. But that's not it. It's the music; it's standing up there under the lights. A lot of women just flip; looks have nothing to do with it. You call Mick Jagger good-looking?

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.