Erroll Garner

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

I always play what I feel. I always feel like me, but I’m a different me every day. I get ideas from everything. A big color, the sound of water and wind, or a flash of something cool. Playing is like life. Either you feel it or you don’t.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

Talent is only the starting point.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.