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.
It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!
I always believed in being myself.
I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.
Anybody talented in any way – they’re called eccentric.
Its always night, or we wouldn’t need light.
The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.
I don’t know where jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
I don’t know what other people are doing – I just know about me.
Miles’d got killed if he hit me.
A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
I played the wrong wrong notes.
Jazz is my adventure.
Be-bop wasn’t developed in any deliberate way.
I never though much about race.
Everyone is a genius at being themselves.
I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I’m pretty good at those games.
Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.
I find my inspiration in myself.
We have two kids, my wife and myself.
I’d go stupid collecting and counting my money.