“Some musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don’t know what to tell a person that can’t – if you can’t tell a person what you’re talkin’ about when they’re rushin’ or droppin’ the tempo, you get somebody else.”

Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.

Drummers – sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

Don’t be afraid of mistakes – There are none.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?

People will go for anything they don’t understand if it’s got enough hype.

You can’t compete with Sweets’ sound and time feel. It’s impossible.

We’re not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got ’em, so they can keep ’em.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ’em a lot of money.

I can’t write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don’t never write for myself.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

I always listen to what I can leave out.

Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein IS the monster.

Crime is increasing, trigger happy policing. Panic is spreading, God knows where we’re heading.

So I started out for God knows where. I guess I’ll know when I get there.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway.

It’s an addiction and addiction is something I should know something about.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

I don’t encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!