I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.

Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon.

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'

I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.