"I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast."
"I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."
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More quotes by Paul Desmond
"Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught."
"The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity."
"Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz."
"Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem."
"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini."