Bill Evans

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

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.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I’m concerned with retaining that process.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Django was the definitive genius on the guitar, and the depth of his gift was so spectacular.