John Coltrane

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

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

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

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

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Music to me is like breathing. I don’t get tired of breathing, I don’t get tired of music.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.

Indian music is very soulful and the only other school that develops improv to the high degree you find in Jazz.

It was in tune when I bought it.

You’ve got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn’t have much meaning.