Miles Davis

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

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

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

Always look ahead, but never look back.

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.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.

The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.