Thelonious Monk

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

I find my inspiration in myself.

All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

[In 1972] At the moment, we’re getting the same thrill from seeing the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Jo Jo Gunne, and Judee Sill happen… It’s as hard to do it with Jackson Browne as it was to do it with Joni five years ago.

I’m always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

I think you have to leave a lot to the imagination!