Chick Corea

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that’s all it is about is opinions.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I’m doing is I’m studying.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

It’s very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he’s creating, the fact that he’s experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in a brotherhood of some kind… we’re in it together.

Forget about upholding the tradition and just play who you really are.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

Something just grabs you about a song.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

Jazz? has no boundaries.

Mary Lou Williams used to tell me: If you’re not feeling right, play a minor tune and it falls into place.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.