If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.

Make the drummer sound good.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.