Charlie Parker

I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.

Ever since I've ever heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise - as clean as possible, anyway, and more or less tuned to people. Something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know?

If you come on a band tense, you're going to play tense. If you come a little bit foolish, act just a little bit foolish, and let yourself go, better ideas will come.

I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live.

I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, you know.

Definitely, study is absolutely necessary in all forms - it's just like any talent that's born within somebody. It's just like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know? Like, schooling brings out the polish of any talent. It happens anywhere in the world.