Sonny Rollins

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

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

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

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

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

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

I always had a deep feeling to be one with the very minute I’m in.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

If I could read it, I could play it.

Jazz music can relax, soothe and uplift the mind when you absorb it.

I sing like I feel.

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.

I think I’ve tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It’s kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.