If you take the creation of music and the creation of your own life values as your overall goal, then living becomes a musical process.

To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.

Sometimes when it goes really well, you wonder, "who's that at the piano?"

I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes.

To feel is perhaps the most terrifying thing in this society.