Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.

When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way.

That is a lot of the reason I do what I do, to really spread the word and spread information and turn people onto different things they may not be, y'know, aware of. That is what Naked City is certainly about.

You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy.

That was my challenge as a composer. Like with anything, to keep yourself interested in doing what you do, you set yourself challenges. So I said, Okay, I’ll try to write a hundred tunes in a year.

One thing that I do ask myself when I’m in the creative process is, ‘Does the world need this?’

I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that’s the end of it.

My solo music – I get up onstage, I improvise and it’s my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we’re improvising together. Then it’s not my music; it’s our music.

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive. You can’t sit down and write 300 compositions in a three-month period and think that you’re doing it all by yourself.

I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I’m very impatient with people that don’t give my work the respect I feel it deserves.