Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help..

The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touc….

The bare earth, plantless, waterless, is an immense puzzle. In the forests or beside rivers everything speaks to humans. The desert does not speak. I….

I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you ….

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life..

I never really sounded like Bird, but that was my mission. I didn't care if people said that I copied him; I loved Bird's playing so much. But Mingus….

The most effective preaching of the gospel is when it is accompanied by beautiful, appropriate music..

Once you discover that you can, then you must..

You've got to care about the music...You'd better not be doing it for the publicity, the fame or the money. And you'd sure better not be doing it bec….

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz..

I think the kazoo and chocolate-chip cookies have a lot in common. All you need is a mouth to appreciate either one..

A lot of times, when people say hip-hop, they don't know what they're talking about. They just think of the rappers. When you talk about hip-hop, you….

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious..

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself..

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule..

A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination..

Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation. Meditation returns you to the source. And the sou….

There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music..

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning..

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act..

All singers have this fault: if asked to sing among friends they are never so inclined; if unasked, they never leave off..