Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.

As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business.

Mastery means responsibility, ability to respond in real time to the need of the moment. Intuitive or inspired living means not just passively hearing the voice, but acting on it.

The Western Idea of practice is to acquire a skill. It is very much related to your work ethic, which enjoins us to endure struggle or boredom now in return for future rewards. The Eastern idea of practice, on the other hand, is to create the person, or rather to actualize or reveal the complete person who is already there.... Not only is practice necessary to art, it is art.

Here the artist is, as it were, an archaeologist, uncovering deeper and deeper strata as he works, recovering not an ancient civilization, but something as yet unborn, unseen, unheard, except by the inner eye, the inner ear. He is not just removing apparent surfaces from some external object, he is removing apparent surface from the Self, revealing his original nature.

The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.

The conception, composition, practice, and performance of a piece of music can blossom in a single moment.