Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.

Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.

We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.