"What is music to you? What would you be without music? Music is everything. Nature is music (cicadas in the tropical night). The sea is music, the wind is music. The rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in the sky are music. Music is the oldest entity. The scope of music is immense and infinite. It is the ‘esperanto’ of the world."

"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."

"There are two kinds of music: the good kind, and the other kind. I make the good kind."

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

"If this word 'music' is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound."

"Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."

"A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?"

"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music."

"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."