Herbie Hancock

The true artform is being a human being.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

I think I was supposed to play Jazz.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

We open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to arrive at something new and different.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

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.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.