Thelonious Monk

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

After two takes you’re imitating yourself.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

It’s the same for listeners. If you can’t stand your girlfriend, can’t take it anymore, put on your headphones and escape into another world.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

Something just grabs you about a song.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

Music was our wife, and we loved her. And we stayed with her, and we clothed her, and we put diamond rings on her hands.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.