Miles Davis

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

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

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands …If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

It’s important to find your own voice and do something of your own.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

I love it when people hear my music but can’t figure out what instrument I’m playing.

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an’ my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

I don’t meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

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

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

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

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.