I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out.

I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be...I never tried to imitate anybody, but when you love somebody's music, you're influenced...I really don't know how I developed my sound, but it comes from a combination of my musical conception and no doubt the basic shape of the oral cavity.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

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.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

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.