My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

When I got this saxophone, it became a religion. There wasn't TV, there wasn't much money, and there was just a real dedication.... I never thought of it as an art. It was just work that I loved. Not just work, but work that I loved. I loved it so much, I would play it if nobody listened to it. Any jazz musician, if there's nobody around to listen, would play just for the sheer joy of improvising music.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be.

I'm a recovered alcoholic. I don't do anything anymore, but those things, those things take away ... You're a different personality completely when you take those. For those who are really chemically dependent on anything, it's not you.