Joe Pass on jazz improvisation, 1994

You have a form, but you have accumulated a great deal of ideas or themes and melodies that you have heard, and you can put them in. They're like having a pocketful of music, or a mindful. If you have a good night, they come; if you have a bad night, they don't come. But you have this form that you work with.

I think the only person who's totally creative is a guy who has never played before. He goes boomp [makes a playing motion], and that's creative, because what does he know? Once he's learned the C chord, he's finished creating.

From a roundtable interview with Joe Pass, Pepe Romero, Paco Peña, and Leo Kottke, for Acoustic Guitar magazine