Miles Davis

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

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

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

Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

Nothing is out of the question for me. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light…Then I’m grateful.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.

If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.