Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

When we are on tour we also take chances.

Other times I say: I would very much like to try to do something with this music, but after playing for a few minutes, I have to break off.

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

There's a certain phraseology involved in jazz, and I've moved away from that.

I feel very strongly when there's no chance for me to find a key to a piece.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

If you feel you have the right key, you try to make some phrase or sound that will fit.

The secret of success is this all-powerful creative energy within, which human beings often sleep over throughout their entire lives.

And this is when I knew I was black for real.This is when I knew black was a citywhose walls were constantly under siege....

If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it.

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.

The first thing that a person finds in life and the last to which he holds out his hand, and the most precious that he possess, even if he does not realize it, is family life.

There's nothing on my mind that couldn't be expressed by a long insane outburst of hysterical rage.

Usually in a battle sequence when a bomb is going off, you forget you're acting.

Thoughts are the gun, words are the bullets, deeds are the target, the bulls-eye is heaven.

As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.