Thelonious Monk

All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

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

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

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

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Jazz? has no boundaries.

There are notes between notes, you know.

Your horn is your passport to the world.

To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.

The idea is more important than the style you’re playing in.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

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.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

I discovered very early that it wasn’t quite enough for me to imitate people.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.