Thelonious Monk

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

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

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

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 like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

I find my inspiration in myself.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.