Sonny Rollins

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

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

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

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

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

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

For me, music and life are all about style

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

You’ve got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn’t have much meaning.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Musicianship is using your two ears.