Wayne Shorter

Music is interior decoration.

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.

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

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

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.

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.

It’s part of what the blues does, to write about these things. JB Lenoir was the main one in this regard – he wrote about Korea, too, in fact. Songs that reflect these current situations – in his case, racial issues for the most part: in my case, what has happened to me, and I was in Korea.

If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

The blues tells a story in itself. It can make you happy or give you a feeling to swing.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

Difference between sex and love? Well, you’re not always sure you’re in love. But when you’re having sex, there’s really no mistaking it.

Jazz is the sound of surprise.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.