Cecil Taylor

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

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

I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.