Charlie Parker

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

I am a devout musician.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

The guitar and the dog, in order not to be separated from man, have submitted themselves with resignation to the worst alterations of size and appearance.

I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

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.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

A great thing about being a musician is you don’t stop until the day you die.

When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.

Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic: take it or leave it.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Your horn is your passport to the world.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

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