F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.