Miles Davis

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

Stop before you’re done.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

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

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

I wasn’t so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That’s why I’m broke.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

Music is what feelings sound like.

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

Man, you tell a story.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

To work is to feel alive.

My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, ‘That’s just that ole blues singer.’

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.