Miles Davis Quotes - Page 2

In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you; it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

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?

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

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.

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.

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?

For me, music and life are all about style.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.