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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

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