I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.

I've been the oldest child since before you were born

Go to hell, I'm reading!

Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less.

As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

When we think in the context of the last decade's infringements upon personal liberty and the last year's revelations, it's not about surveillance. It's about liberty.

Each one should realize there is nothing in (us) which denies that which (we) desire.

There is one advantage to having nothing, it never needs repair.

Where there is most labour there is not always most life.

I'm an angel compared to some of my friends.

A scrap of knowledge about sublime things is worth more than any amount about trivialities.