Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

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

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it's only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

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.

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.