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

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.

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

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.

... and then beginning to go back to what you can't even remember.

All of life is peaks and valleys. Don't let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.

Every good thing that has happened in your life happened because something changed.

Is your integrity at the level of the thing you are praying for?

There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.

What we Americans need to do is respect that incredible blessing that we have as a nation and make sure that we are leading in the best ways possible.

I think it's very rare that you see girl friendships on television. It's always cattiness and all that drama.

I've gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.

I thought of the character being real, a living person, not a drawing.

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.