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" I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz. "

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" They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind. "

" It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up. "

" The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano. "

" I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. "

" Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work. "

" If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that. "

" I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination. "

" Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. "

" You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good. "

" Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk. "

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

" We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. "

" The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original. "

" Saxophone is one thing, and music is another. "

" I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. "

" When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. "

" I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete. "

" Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention. "

" Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with. "

" Jazz is people's music, a collectivity. "

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

" What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. "

" I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. "

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

" People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world. "

" When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all. "

" When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly. "

" If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die. "

" Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways. "

" I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down. "