Herbie Hancock

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

It’s not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

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

I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.

I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

We don’t talk music. We just play.

I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.