Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.
Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.
I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public want – you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.
Jazz is my adventure. I’m after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That’s it. Just using notes differently.
The loudest noise in the world is silence.
The majority of juice-heads and winos and junkies arent musicians.
All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.
Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.
Jazz is freedom. You think about that.
I didn’t know there were 2 ten o’clocks in a day...
A genius is the one most like himself.
I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.
I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn’t born there, but I’ve been living there all my life.
The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.
Those who want to know what sound goes into my music should come to NY and open their ears.
Just because you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.