If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
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.