I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!
I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?
The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.
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’.
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.
If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.
If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.
I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.
I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.
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 find my inspiration in myself.
Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.
Jazz is freedom. You think about that.
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.
All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.
