Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

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?

Sometimes [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there; if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

The music speaks for itself!