Thelonious Monk

[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

I find my inspiration in myself.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.

If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

I am a devout musician.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

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

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

I like the interplay in the music.

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

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.