Chick Corea

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

It’s difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he’s creating.

Without a doubt, my richest relationships are my long-term friendships with musical partners, because we make music together. That’s what we love to do with our lives.

Only a spiritual being has awareness.

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

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

I think music needs to be of its time and speak to that time.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

People couldn’t give an F about how many cars you got any more. It’s about the way the music sounds, where you’re going, the experience you’re going to hanging out with your friends, the type clothes that you’re wearing – all of that’s art.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

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’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.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

Your humanity is your instrument.