“There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.”

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can’t do what we do is because they’re so comfortable doin’ what they do.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

That’s the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Always listen for what you can leave out.

My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can’t be trusted.

I’m out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I’m still playing.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

I don’t pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself…and I’m too vain to play anything I think is bad.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Inculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

Each others’ lives are our best textbooks.

Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that.

The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note.

Surrender your whole being to a note, and gravity disappears with one chord.

You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

I’d love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?