Diana Krall

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius.

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

I don’t dig staying in one groove.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.