Diana Krall

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

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

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

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

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.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.

The popular song is America’s greatest ambassador.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.

That’s where I heard feedback first – from Les Paul. Also vibratos – even before B.B. King, you know. I’ve traced a hell of a lot of rock and roll, little riffs and things, back to Les Paul – it’s all there. I mean, he’s the father of it all: multi-tracking and everything else. If it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been anything really.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.