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

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

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

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is in thinking of what to play.

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.