Dizzy Gillespie

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

If a guy’s got it, let him give it. I’m selling music, not prejudice.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

I discovered very early that it wasn’t quite enough for me to imitate people.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

I would’ve loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn’t good enough.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I think I’ve tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It’s kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.

Your humanity is your instrument.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.