Quote

The thing is, playing with us, whoever was the left winger had to come to play every night because that's the way it was. Charlie came in and he just fit that role - big and strong around the net.

As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.

I grew up listening to Puerto Rican music like everybody else. But when I listened to Charlie Parker for the first time, I said, 'How does this guy play so fast?'

Charlie Parker is my greatest inspiration as a saxophone player - anything that involves him entails a large amount of respect.

I'll tell something, a lot of times I'd listen to Charlie and some of the interviews he had and he said, 'Well, yeah, I was a garbage goal collector.' But he knew the timing. I knew where he was.

As much as I loved Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, and Don Newcombe, I loved watching Willie Mays play more than all of them combined, even if he played for the 'bad guys!'

I was a big 'Charlie Brown' fan as a kid.

I was asking Charlie the most important questions, and you heard the answers.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.