Frank Zappa

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Never lose the groove to find a note.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Music should never be harmless.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.