Thelonious Monk

I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.

I find my inspiration in myself.

After two takes you’re imitating yourself.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty 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.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

So until we see you again, bright moments and keep searchin’ for your mystery note on the universal piano of life.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

A great thing about being a musician is you don’t stop until the day you die.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

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.