I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

That's the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all.

The reason [drummers] call things "unison", and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat; it's so slight that they call it "unison", but it's not unison.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.