Dave Brubeck

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

Jazz stands for freedom.

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

For me, music and life are all about style

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

I play whatever the hell comes out… that’s it.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

There are a million good tunes.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost