Bill Evans

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

Jazz will only go where we the composers and musicians take it. It is up to us.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

Once you start collecting records you learn more and more about Jazz and Blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

I don’t really look at my career in terms of highlights and low lights. I think I’m at this place right now and to be at this place right now I’ve had to go through many obstacles and lots of highs and lows and for me it’s about the entire journey.

Jazz stands for freedom.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

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

Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it’s because music is fun, plain and simple.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.