You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

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?

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.

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.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.