Quotes
I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.
I just wrote a new piece for the flutist James Galway, Giants of the Night Flute Concerto, which was written in memory of Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie.
I jammed with Monk and Bird and played and recorded with the bands of Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Lionel Hampton, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham and many great players at venues that were often attended by just a handful of people.
He heard me play with Charles Mingus before we met and knew Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie - a lot of the same people I did - all of whom appreciated him as much as I did because he was such a down-home, egalitarian person.
Gregory Corso began to study the classics while he was in prison and became self-educated through living in the streets.
Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.
Even before he had one book published, Jack was one of those people you could feel was very special.
Esquire, in a July, 1957 issue, has a photograph of me playing the French horn at the Five Spot.
At times I might play some kind of folkloric flute, although I didn't play those with the frequency or the skill then as I do now.
At places like the Cedar Tavern, the painters were really the center of what you might you call the social scene.
Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.
A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington.
You know that saying, bad things don't happen to good people? That's a lie.
Women must understand that simply attacking or hating men is just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realize that when she makes a man crawl it doesn't give her power.
When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people?
What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.
There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.
The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.
Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.
Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.