“I usually write from the rhythm section…If a drummer got a funky beat on some things – like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that’s even – I can write something.”

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.

If I hear a song like “Time After Time.” I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin’ this song. I said, “God damnnnnn!”

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.