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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. "

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" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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