I've always tried to be a poet more than anything else. I mean, professional musicians die.
I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.
I am not afraid of European influences. The point is to use them, as Ellington did, as part of my life as an American Negro.
One of the things Mother said to me, 'You want this, you're going to practice.' And I know how to practice.
You know what the material is so that you never play it the same way twice.
Someone once asked me if I was gay. I said, 'Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?' I avoid the trap of easy definition.
The quality of life, values that go down to doin' that, that's the issue.
When you think about musicians who are reading music, my contention has always been the energy that you're using deciphering what the symbol is is taking away from the maximum creative energy that you might have had if you understood that it's but a symbol.
Lena Horne - when she walked onstage, she really was Erzulie.
Mother, being a pianist, told me how to play with my fingers on the piano.
When you play, when you perform, it might be for the last time, so you got to do it.
What I am doing is creating a language. A different American language.
The first record I made, when I listen to it, I understand. I understand perfectly well why certain musicians were unhappy with me. I had to decide: was I unhappy with me? I liked it. If they didn't like it, it was on them.
I understand about the relative strengths of people, and I don't think people have to be anything. They can be nothin' if they want to be.
To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.
Fats - very funny man, but every note that he played was like a pearl.
They say, 'We will give you money, but we want you to play this or that.' And I always thought, 'If I'm going to do that, I might as well go back and be a dishwasher.'
I'm saying that people who are enmeshed in situations of subjugation and have to live, have to find ways to project their dignity as human beings - in spite of all the efforts of those around them to degrade them - I'm saying that this music is the manifestation of the dignity in the life that has always been present.
You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it.
If you take the creation of music and the creation of your own life values as your overall goal, then living becomes a musical process.
