You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

Play what you know and then play above that

If you're going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.

That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.