In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

I'm fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

So I played alto for quite a while until I saved up the money for the baritone

This life of being a transient human being has gotten to a point when it's very hard to bear

People talk about innovations and evolutions and that kind of thing; I don't understand about that nonsense. It's like, all instruments are there to use all the time

Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.

Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.

good weatheris likegood women—it doesn’t always happenand when it doesit doesn’talways last.

I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath.

And one more thing: you still believe that man can be good. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't have invented all this nonsense to convince yourself otherwise.

At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly

You can't make everybody laugh. You gotta just do what you think is funny. Just be obstreperous to everybody.

I had never even thought I'd be an actress - I was supposed to be a lawyer. But the motivation is the same: when you act, you defend a role; you have to be convincing. It's the same career.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

A woman once said to me, 'Any religion that is to be any good to one must be one they make for themselves,' - and it is so. She, curiously, was a clergyman's wife.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.