Dizzy Gillespie

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

A great thing about being a musician is you don’t stop until the day you die.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

The prospect of having to sit through one of Rachmaninov’s extended symphonies or piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those notes, and to what end?

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

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

All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.

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