Miles Davis

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

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

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.

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 played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I think that what is important is that the music be honest and direct and that it is relevant to today.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

To this day, I don’t like people walking on stage not looking good. You have to look good. If you feel special about yourself then you’re going to play special.

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

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

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

The reason I write music is that I feel it’s a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

I have no one style.