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

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

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

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

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.

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.

I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.