Improvisation is a compositional method.

I think the voice does that perfectly adequately without being imitated by other instruments.

My roots are in my record player.

You know, the whole philosophy of ad hoc combinations has its strengths and its weaknesses.

In a certain sense, aspects of my solo playing were developed in order to test the theory about how long particular elements could be, as parts of so-called free improvisations.

Those early steps are very important in understanding the evolution. But in themselves, maybe now you need the later records to understand the significance of the earlier records!

We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from.

To speak about notation as the only way that you can guarantee structure of course is already very suspect.

There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore.

I think the solo playing, the decision to start playing solo, came out of having discovered what lay behind the doors that that technique opened for me.

When you add a period of 25 years between the playing and the listening, then the whole question of meaning gets very complicated.

. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.

If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.

Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains", said Edmund, "That's because we've got something in them", replied Lucy.

Cut down the forest, not just a tree. Out of the forest of desire springs danger. By cutting down both the forest of desire and the brushwood of longing, be rid of the forest, bhikkhus.

love is always in danger of being sentimentalized.

The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

Sometimes I wonder if I got lulled into not wanting things because I grew up black in this country.

His sense of humor is purely cheap vaudeville, yet everyone falls for it.

Just as I am not upset with somebody who has caught a cold, so too I am not upset with somebody who's caught the faith virus.