Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

His name, even, is part of the marketing scheme, I mean, Thelonious Sphere Monk - how can you think of a better name to fit his style of playing?

I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde.

I like people not being able to be pigeon-holed.

People come from a certain generation and a certain whole way of looking at things, and you really do become a prisoner of your own world.

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

When it is imperative to make a vivid offering towards life then a simulated introspection for all possible dimensions may be endured to establish a relationship with external world and world within

It's kind of sad, the brighter they burn the sooner they die. They're beautiful while they last

Keep the goal in mind and push onward to accomplish it.

Humans don't have any type of interest... HAVING SO MUCH STUFF AROUND THEM AND SO LITTLE INTEREST IN THEM.

Staying in a hotel this time. They put me up in a little bit of a shithole. Yeah. Just this side of rinky dink. The first 7 floors are a homeless shelter, but I'm on 8.

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.

Outside of nirvana, the planes begin, the subtlest planes of light that vibrate fastest, all the way on down through the astral realms through the physical and so on.

Anywhere I can ski in the morning and sell a movie in the afternoon is good.

Our trip to Moscow opens new prospects for peace in the Middle East. Our people want simple things: to be free and to have sovereignty. All this is impossible without an end to the occupation.

What man has more than enough and gives it to the world? Only the man of Tao.