"Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent."
"Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it."
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Source: Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis. Book by Paul Maher, Michael K. Dorr, p. 18, 2009.
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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."
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"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."