John Coltrane

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

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

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

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

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

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I’m honest.

So until we see you again, bright moments and keep searchin’ for your mystery note on the universal piano of life.

There’s only two types of music. The stuff you can write down and the stuff you can’t. The stuff that you can’t write down is Jazz. Everything else is Polka.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.