Sonny Rollins

Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

I’m fortunate that I’m making a living at it now because I’m not equipped to do anything else.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

A wise man practices slowly; but a wiser man practices even slower.

Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.