Sonny Rollins: I have always been a person that has had a strong sense of right and wrong, a strong spiritual guide or guardian angel or belief maybe, I don’t know how to explain it, but a conscience maybe. There was always something inside of me that was talking to me all the time. When something talks to me, like the thing with the drugs, I realized something said, “Yeah,” and it finally came to me, “This is not the way to go.” I just have that in me, and when I find something that I want to do, I block out everything else, and I would do it. It’s the sense of right and wrong, so it doesn’t matter to me that people were saying, “How can you leave the music? Because they won’t accept you back if you go away. You will lose your edge,” and all. This was inconsequential to me, because I had an idea that I wanted to improve my self, my musical arsenal, if you will. So I do what I want to do, and that’s that. I am very strong about that, and this has held me in good stead, just listening to the inner voice. This is what I do, and I am happy about it, that I have that much determination, if you want to call it that. That’s what I have done all my life, and the sabbaticals were the same.