Dave Brubeck

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you’re supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

Children have helped me a lot.

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

There’s a lot of people out there who go through hard times, and they feel alone. They feel like nobody is there. But I’m in the same boat.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.

I comfortable with everything – say whatever you want.