I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

We loved one another, man. I mean all those stories about the rift ... there was no question of a rift between Charlie Parker and me.

I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.