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.

I was blessed that I got married early and had a good wife. That sort of kept me straight. Probably I would have been like Charlie Parker, you know, involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that if I hadn't had this stability.

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

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

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

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