Quotes on Music

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

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

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Composing is improvisation slowed down.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, 'Yes, where are you going?' And he says, 'I want a ticket to nowhere.' I thought: that's it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

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

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.

Do not neglect your music. It will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church

Before I compose a piece, I walk round it several times, accompanied by myself.

I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it's complete control