Hearing myself so much all the time, I don't think I sound that special all the time because it's me.

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.

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.

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.

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

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