Paul Desmond

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

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

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about, but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.

Jazz? has no boundaries.

To get the music the way you want it, there’s a lot of work involved.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.