Sonny Rollins

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

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

Music is the most fantastic drug there is!

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

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

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.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

Music and life are all about style.

One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.