Miles Davis

Music is an addiction.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

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

For me, music and life are all about style

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

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

Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

When I decided that I wanted to be a Jazz musician, I knew that it was about improvising.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

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

So until we see you again, bright moments and keep searchin’ for your mystery note on the universal piano of life.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.