Play what you know and then play above that

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

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.

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

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.

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