I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

A first love always occupies a special place.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

To invest your life, you must invest your time and make sure it doesn’t just melt away like Salvador Dali’s melting clock.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

Talking about my personal life onstage, I've realized I'm not one of those comics who can do that. I can allude to it but I don't want to be a confessional performer.

I'm a believer that things happen. Fate is what happens.

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. ...We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.

I do think that the Republican Party is in a crisis right now, a crisis of confidence about who we are.

My father always says that heroism is in the Pashtun DNA.

My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.

All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.

I think religion is a bunch of hooey, and I think that the holidays are an opportunity for people to get stressed out, getting their rush to shop. It's so conformist.