Charlie Parker

The time is now.

I am a devout musician.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

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

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

Music is interior decoration.

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

During these years I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.

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

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

Jazz is the sound of surprise.