Samuel L Jackson

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I’ll fit whatever I’m trying to say around a melody.

Jazz musicians are the only workers who will put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

When rock music came in, I wasn’t bitter about it. I was puzzled.

I could see the blues was about survival.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

If it ain’t fun, I want no part of it man. That’s the reason I play.

All music is beautiful.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

The Blues is never old.