Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

Our nights didn't begin until after noon. Because in the old days, you'd start Birdland at 8:30 or 9 pm and play until 4 in the morning. Then you'd go out to the corner and talk to a couple of musicians - I used to talk to Oscar Pettiford a whole lot - you'd stand there till 7, 8 or 9, or else go down to the jam session at Minton's.

In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn't dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.