Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.

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.

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

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.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.