Sonny Rollins

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

I’m fortunate that I’m making a living at it now because I’m not equipped to do anything else.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

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

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz.

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

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

It’s not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

It was in tune when I bought it.