I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it."

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

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?

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

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.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.