Gerry Mulligan

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

Life on the road is murder. It’s as though life begins and ends with your horn in your mouth.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

Music is a verb.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.