Diana Krall

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

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

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Inspiration grows into full-scale creation through persistence and imagination.

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.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody.

Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.

I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.