I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

I just consider myself a student, trying to learn more about it.

I felt that I had been influenced by being in the city enough and I wanted to go off by myself to see what was going on. I remember going out there and looking in the mirror and thinking I wasn't anything.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people.

I'm approaching a period in my life though where I'd like to be totally absorbed into music, doing concerts, writing something. Basically, that IS what I am doing.

What I try to impart to a musician is to really try to practice the instrument in a really sincere way. Learn as much about music as you possibly can. Learn composition. Study to try to create compositions of your own and put your own personal touch on your music.

I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.

If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

Creating sounds together with other musicians is something I've always liked doing.

I noticed that when it came time to improvise, my students would often make mistakes.

I think the best thing you can teach a person is how to learn. And once they discover their own individual approach to that - which is inside all of us - then all of a sudden, they've opened up a door of endless resources.

I'm the kind of guy that if I go to a concert and hear something that knocks me out, I don't want to be left out of that. I'm going to try to get into that, and I'm running back home to practice.

I'm trying to learn to really use space. My philosophy is that every time you interrupt space in a very confident, secure manner, then music happens.

If you're playing with a number of people, there are all sorts of textures, all kinds of possibilities you can get into. So why just play a theme together and then take solos?

It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'

Life is short, and, once somebody is gone, they're gone.

Man, I used to go around and think, 'Oh my God, what must it be like to be going down the street, and someone asks you, 'What's your name?' and the reply would be, 'John Coltrane.' I couldn't imagine what that would be like.

Music has a way of getting under your skin.

My central quest was to have a piece played on the saxophone sound like more than one instrument, exploiting different registers and wide interval leaps.

This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

What I'm after is a composed music that will sound like improvised music when improvisors play it. You shouldn't be able to tell what parts are being improvised and what parts were written out beforehand; it should sound like the same music.

You can work on music a few lifetimes.

I would rather go to any extreme than suffer anything that is unworthy of my reputation, or of that of my crown.

It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.

Not being a comic book fan, being thrown into that and seeing the extreme - it's taken very seriously. So I tried to do as much learning as I could about it so I wasn't mean or anything.

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

The whole drive of western culture, the part of it which is serious, is towards an extreme objectification. It's carried to the point where the human subject is treated almost as if it's dirt in the works of a watch.

Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances - but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.

I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.

I love extreme sports, I like snowboarding and motorcross and rollerblading and hockey.

What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it's almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they're taking it to the hilt.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

I am not a tree-hugger and I don't think mine is an extreme point of view.

I don't get over the wonder of it, and 'The Last Samurai' was an extreme example of that. Every day when I went to the set, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.

I'm a bit of a worrier, to an extreme. I'll crack a joke, then worry if I've offended someone - even when they're laughing. I have a guilt complex, always worrying.

I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution.