Miles Davis

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

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

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

Play what you know and then play above that.

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

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

It was a great thrill to listen every night and hear him on NBC radio. Les played just as great then. And then later on, in the 1950s, Les Paul turned the whole world on to guitar. He’s just a terrific, flashy, tasty guitarist.

I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

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

People couldn’t give an F about how many cars you got any more. It’s about the way the music sounds, where you’re going, the experience you’re going to hanging out with your friends, the type clothes that you’re wearing – all of that’s art.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.