Keith Jarrett

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

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

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

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

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

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.