“I don’t want to play out of another man’s bag.”

I used to live at the Cecil Hotel, which was next door to Minton’s [Playhouse]. We used to jam just about every night when we were off. Lester [Young], Don Byas and myself – we would meet there all the time and like, exchange ideas. It wasn’t a battle, or anything.

I’ve been back in New York a year and a half now. Before that I was on the West Coast for five years.

If you try all different styles that are in vogue, I think you con yourself. Me, I just stick by my guns; I don’t want to play out of another man’s bag.

I like to play things that people understand, or maybe tunes that they could recognize. And so — I play for the people, just as much as for myself. Because, as I say, I still like to play.

I dont listen to my own records a lot. Once in a while – to check out my mistakes. Because you can always see a spot or two in the record where you could have done better. So you more or less study this way.

There’s no comparison between the two. You hear things in New York you don’t hear anywhere else. Unless these guys go out. Quite a few make it out to the Coast. Of course, you can’t stay in New York for ever. You have to move.

Like every other place, I guess, Kansas City was quite a different city when I was a youngster there. They had quite a few clubs, and we had what we used to call jam sessions every night.

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is.

I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.

To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.

I went to my agent and told them, ‘I want to be on another Disney show.’

Larry, you only told me one lie. You said there will be another Larry Bird. Larry, there will never, ever be another Larry Bird.

In the NBA you could lose tonight and you have to put that game behind you because you have another game the next night.

One man’s ‘magic’ is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.

Love of another individual opens a new relation between the personality and the world. The lover responds in a new way to nature and may even write poetry.