Herbie Hancock

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.

I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

I think I was supposed to play Jazz.

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

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

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

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.

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

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

When the label came to me to say, ‘would you like to do another record,’ I said, ‘Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let’s do it.’ And that was pretty much it… I never stopped writing, it’s just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.