Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

When you get cancer, it's like really time to look at what your life was and is, and I decided that everything I've done so far is not as important as what I'm going to do now.

Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing.

As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.

If you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from.

My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.