If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads

The melody is French. But that's the end of the record. I named it "Jean Pierre Then There Were None," you know, because of the big explosion. You'll like it. It's a nice album.

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.