I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like

I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.

My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.

People sometimes have a very hard time accepting change.

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive. You can't sit down and write 300 compositions in a three-month period and think that you're doing it all by yourself.

I mean I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I'm very impatient with people that don't give my work the respect I feel it deserves.