Ben Ratliff

“I remember once I asked Wayne for the time," Miller told Mercer. "He started talking to me about the cosmos and how time is relative." Miller and [Wayne] Shorter were waiting somewhere -- an airport, a train station, a hotel. The band's keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, who took charge of such matters as what the road crew was supposed to do and when, set Miller straight. "You don't ask Wayne shit like that," he snapped. "It's 7:06 p.m." [p.1]”
― Ben Ratliff, The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music

“I’d say, ‘Trane, man, why are you doing that, beating on your chest and howling in the microphone?’” Ali remembered in an interview. “He’d say, ‘Man, I can’t find nothing else to play on the horn.’ He exhausted the saxophone. He couldn’t find nothing else to play … he ran out of horn.”
― Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound