Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.

There are people I would like to work with. Its a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I cant really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.

I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.

Because I'm associated with an avant-garde sensibility, people think I'm looking down on popular culture, but I don't want to be part of a new elitism.

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

The missing links in my life's work, no less!