Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.

I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.

It’s okay to cry. Giving in to the tears is terrifying, like freefalling to earth without a parachute. But it’s vital to our wellbeing as we process the deep anguish.

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.

Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.

The people you don't know turn out to be exactly like the people you do know, same faults, same everything.

Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

My mother-in-law buys her coats in a carper shop. She wears a 9x12.