It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

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.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.