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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

" 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'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. "

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

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

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

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

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