Miles Davis

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Music is an addiction.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.

You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve; I write about them.

It was in tune when I bought it.

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

I’ve always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.