I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.
I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.
I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.
If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.
I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.
If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.
Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.
[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!
I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?
All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.
I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
Jazz is freedom. You think about that.
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.
The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.
I find my inspiration in myself.
I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.
