In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

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

Music is the framework around the silence.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!