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

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.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

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.

I learn something new every day - to edit, to take out all the extraneous matter and stress form, logic, and content. I try to play beautiful music.