I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out.

I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

His smile was small and immediate, crooked, like I’d put his whole world off its axis, but he was somehow okay with that.

Jump, when they say, and ask, how high? It is the only way to truly fit in. And who would want to be any different?

Being like them doesn’t help them. Being like them just encourages them to continue being the way they are.

Your future is still before you. Your land is a vast storehouse of mineral and agricultural wealth awaiting further development for the benefit of mankind. It potentialities are magnificent.

Many of our racetracks were built in the '60s - not much real estate for runoff.

Barack Obama will appeal to both black and white voters in America. White voters who'll think he's Tiger Woods.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.

Never forget that what becomes timeless was once truly new.