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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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 came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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