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

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

" Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

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

" 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. "