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" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "