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" 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. "

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

" If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up. "

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

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

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

" Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it. "

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

" 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. "

" The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use. "

" 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. "

" To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration. "

" Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first. "

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

" Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register. "

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

" Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same. "

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "