Miles Davis

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Stop before you’re done.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands …If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.