Jazz Quotes

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gonna keep playin'

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

The worst crime is faking it.

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn't play like Wynton.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.

I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.