Sonny Rollins

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

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.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

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

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.

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

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.

The first time I ever had to go overseas for music was to play the Royal Festival Hall in London, singing in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and that week was insane: Thursday I rehearse with the orchestra; Friday I sing two songs in front of 2,500 people, which I have never done before; and the next day I go to Abbey Road to record with Herbie Hancock; and then I am playing a pub in south London somewhere, and nobody cares because London have lost some sporting match; and then I go home and I’m standing in front of my washing machine, putting my unmentionables into the dryer, and in that instant, I just looked at myself and said ‘This life is going to be strange’.

I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

Dog spelled backward is God. That’s pretty heavy.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

Especially, I want my work-and the trios if possible-to sing.

I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

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

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.