Miles Davis

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

For me, music and life are all about style.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Music is the framework around the silence.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.