Herbie Hancock

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.

I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

Jazz? has no boundaries.

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

Nothing is so well-prepared as a great spontaneous performance.

You don’t have to live the blues to play the blues.

I just fell in love with the integrity of the music and that was it.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

The Blues and Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.

With the birth of the first artist, came the inevitable afterbirth… the first critic