Sonny Rollins

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

I’m fortunate that I’m making a living at it now because I’m not equipped to do anything else.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz.

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.

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

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.