A painting is music you can see, and music is a painting you can hear. - Miles Davis

Take it off! That's some sad __, man. In the first place, I hear some Charlie Parker cliches. . . . They don't even fit. Is that what the critics are digging? Them critics better stop having coffee. If there ain't nothing to listen to, they might as well admit it. Just to take something like that and say it's great, because there ain't nothing to listen to, that's like going out and getting a prostitute. [Leonard Feather: This man said he was influenced by Duke Ellington.] I don't give a ! It must be . Right? I don't care who he's inspired by. That __ ain't nothing. In the first place he don't have the - you know, the way you touch a piano. He doesn't have the touch that would make the sound of whatever he thinks of come off. I can tell he's influenced by Duke, but to put the loud pedal on the piano and make a run is very old-fashioned to me. And when the alto player sits up there and plays without no tone . . . That's the reason I don't buy any records.

It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.'

Being rebellious and black, a nonconformist, being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, whatever else you want to call it — I was all those things and more. But I was playing the fuck out of my horn and had a great group, so I didn't get recognition based only on a rebel image.