Jazz is the language of the emotions.

I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.

I've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you - the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.

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

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.

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.