Oscar Peterson

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

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.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

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.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

I’ve studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.