People come from a certain generation and a certain whole way of looking at things, and you really do become a prisoner of your own world.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

His name, even, is part of the marketing scheme, I mean, Thelonious Sphere Monk - how can you think of a better name to fit his style of playing?

I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde.

I like people not being able to be pigeon-holed.

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

Happiness means knowing how to limit some needs which only diminish us, and being open to the many different possibilities which life can offer.

Get it Right today, for today wil never come again

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.

People get very thoughtful when they are in cars. I no longer care for cars. I don't collect them.

One woman reads another's character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering

Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It must be born with men, or else all the obligations in the world will not create it.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.

I still love music - that's never gonna go away.

My sisters said, Why do you make those faces? You make yourself so ugly.

Sin met Mae and Alan coming into the flat. Mae frowned. "Is it no-shirts festival day?" "Every day with Nick is no-shirts festival day," Alan said absently, but he was frowning too.