Jelly Roll Morton

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

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

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

That’s a great thing about jazz. We leave it a little space so that we have the opportunity to go where the moment takes us

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.