"Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent."
"If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted."
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Source: Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe (1990). “Miles”, Simon and Schuster
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"It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong."
"If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow."
"It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change."
"In music, silence is more important than sound."
"See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens."