John Coltrane

I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird.

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Through Dizzy and Bird I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

The arranger doesn’t get any royalties, but I had so much fun doing it.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Jazz stands for freedom.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.