John Coltrane Quotes - Page 2

...That is one of the main causes of this arrogance: the idea of power. Then you lose your true power which is to be part of all, and the only way you can be part of all is to understand it. And when you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and say, 'I know what you're going to teach me'.

Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing.

Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.

I want to be the force which is truly for good.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.

Keep a thing happenin' all throughout.

Change is inevitable in music - things change.

I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.

The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.

I'm into scales right now.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive taste

Considering the great heritage in music that we have - the work of the giants of the past, the present, and the promise of those who are to come - I feel that we have every reason to face the future optimistically.

I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it

Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

I've always felt that even though a man was not a Christian, he still has to know the truth some way or another. Or if he was a Christian, he could know the truth. The truth itself doesn't have any name on it to me. And each man has to find this for himself, I think.

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.