Max Roach

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?

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

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

Jazz is the sound of surprise.

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.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

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.

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.

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

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

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.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.