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.

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

Jazz will be the classical music of the future.

They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

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