Oscar Peterson

It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

Difference between sex and love? Well, you’re not always sure you’re in love. But when you’re having sex, there’s really no mistaking it.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

[In 1969] I think lyrics have always been important to any serious writer of music.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

On my album Here, that’s the first time that I’ve really understood how I could put all the things that were happening in the world and in my life and in our lives as just human beings into one body that was just so powerful and really had a perspective. That was an opening for me and I think that naturally, there is just so much to talk about. I don’t see me getting quiet anytime soon.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.