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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "