Miles Davis

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.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

Stop before you’re done.

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

Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go and what you can do.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

But the guitar, my lady, whether well played or badly played, well strung or badly strung, is pleasant to hear and listen to; being so easy to learn, it attracts the busiest of talented people and makes them put aside loftier occupations so that they may hold a guitar in their hands.

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn’t be playing anything of depth.

I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old.

I didn’t get my music together until I was 40.

A guy is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and all show up in his work. To fasten on any one or two is ridiculous. I will say one thing, though. Lennie Tristano’s early records impressed me tremendously. Tunes like ‘Tautology,’ ‘Marshmallow,’ and ‘Fishin’ Around.’ I heard the fellows in his group building their lines with a design and general structure that was different from anything I’d ever heard in jazz.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?