Herbie Hancock

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

I try to practice with my life.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

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

We never play anything the same way once.

Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn’t feel right to me.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

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

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

Let the music speak for itself.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.