...this is my dilemma. I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever finished - there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, y….

I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that, because there are not to many words to describe the real deep inner part of a h….

Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to….

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a ….

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own..

The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't t….

Jazz never ends... it just continues..

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music..

I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The ….

No one is original. Everyone is derivative..

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz..

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair..

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come agai….

But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn..

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resou….

How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, ….

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not..

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life..

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fac….

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things toget….

We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can..