Wayne Shorter

“There's a steady forward march of a creative process that some of us stay with and don't give up - that should be an admirable thing - from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Miles to Orne...”

“I would pass this music store on the way to school, and there was a clarinet in the window, a second-hand one. And I kept asking my parents to buy it, and eventually they did. I still have i...”

“When John Coltrane passed, we were in the church for the memorial. Albert Ayler came walking in playing, real out there. He was actually mourning through his horn. Mourning, but it was also...”

“Movies would be like a broad painted canvas... or a mystical process which cannot really be explained, like, 'What is electricity?' Along with the images that go on the screen, there's a cor...”

“I think the music that's called 'future stuff' is the soundtrack to the few people who have the nerve and the courage to continue, to go to the end of the line and not be deterred.”

“There's a certain road in life most people walk on, because it's familiar, and they can jostle to get in front place. I prefer to take a different road that's less crowded, with many forks,...”

“You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, 'Yes, where are you going?' And he says, 'I want a ticket to nowhere.'...”

“I know Ornette was playing violin sometimes - that was his bridge into the classical world, to break up that whole pecking order.”

“I think that music opens portals and doorways into unknown sectors that it takes courage to leap into. I always think that there's a potential that we all have, and we can emerge, rise up to...”

“When we were kids, our parents would let us play outside all day, and there was a horse-drawn milk wagon that could become anything in my mind, like a spaceship or something.”

“To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.”