Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn't have a choice.

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.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.

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

When I'm alcohol-free now and even to see the world around me, I appreciate it, but I never truly enjoy too much of it maybe because I feel like I'm a working musician. There are some joyous moments, but I will not think a joyous moment.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

I appreciate men like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins very much.