Wayne Shorter

Music is interior decoration.

Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

Clouds float in the same pattern only once.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

I love it when people hear my music but can’t figure out what instrument I’m playing.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

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.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

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

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.