My ego only needs a good rhythm section

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?