Quote collection
175 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it."
"It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?"
"At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington."
"I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad."
"I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic."
"You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads."
"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
"When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves."
"My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer."
"There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places."
"You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself"
"A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it."
"It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play."
"Always look ahead, but never look back."
"All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal."
"I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis."
"Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!"
"The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play"
"Food makes my mind sluggish."
"That was my gift . . . having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it."