Miles Davis

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

Always look ahead, but never look back.

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

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

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

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved.

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

We never play anything the same way once.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.