Miles Davis

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.

Stop before you’re done.

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

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

A musician starting out today should get a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

Your humanity is your instrument.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

My creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise . . . a part of yourself you never knew existed.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

To work is to feel alive.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.