Thelonious Monk

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

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

Blow your life through your horn.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

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

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all.

I loved the feeling that I got singing.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.