It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

I always felt as a horn player, a jam session wasn't satisfying enough for me. I should have been a rhythm section player, actually.

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically.

A first love always occupies a special place.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

I have been able to get a small audience. It's not the huge audience, but it's enough to make it possible to play. I appreciate that.

Many people do think it's naive to improvise in front of paying customers. I'm not saying one way is better than another.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

We all learn from each other, and I never really hung out with guys in that way, so I missed out.

A lot of bands were doing remotes from ballrooms around the country.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

I just completed a tour in Europe. I played every night. This requires traveling some days for six hours in a van or a train or a car. After six weeks of that, I checked into the hotel and just fell apart.

After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

I wish that person outside would stop coughing.

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

The ego constantly competes with the spirit for control over your inner voice.

Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.

It's not about ego. Really. If it was ego, I'd be telling you about my awesome... oh, never mind.

I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'

I like the moment when I break a man's ego.

It was important to have a similar energy in my performance. To make the character too different would have just been about my ego because it didn't need to be drastically different.

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.

I think anybody would have to be with out common sense to think there weren't aliens. There are billions of planets, and I am convinced Earth is not the only one that's inhabited. It would be quite an ego trip to think that. I think about it all the time.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

I have no ego investment in being on the air. I don't knock others for whom that kind of attention is like oxygen, but I don't miss anything about it.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

If you're working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That's why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat.

Fabio kept asking me out, but I knew we'd never get his ego through the door.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.

That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.'

I never thought about being on a series before. It seemed like such a big commitment. But I love going to work every day. This is not about ego, it's about work, and that's refreshing in this town.