Bill Evans

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody.

I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

Everyone is working who should be.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

I was not prepared to play the role of singer in the camp of the warriors

I can’t understand these guys who just have to have your autograph. I asked one of them ‘What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?’

Notes are expensive… spend them wisely!

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. 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.

Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.