Miles Davis Quotations

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

For me, music and life are all about style.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

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

I'll play it and tell you what it is later.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

Of course, because I was at the beginning of my career. For me, as a musician, to have a chance for an icon like Miles Davis to play on one of my songs was something unique and unbelievable.

I was minding my own business when something says to me, ""you ought to blow trumpet."" I have just been trying ever since.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line, ... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

The teams had to use 20 or more steps, but all of them used many more than that. It is fun and exciting, but most people don't realize how much work goes into building a Rube Goldberg machine.

I learned so much from my cousin (Alexander). I think he did things the right way. That's how he made it to the NFL, ... But the biggest thing I got from him was working hard and doing what ever you can to help the team.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

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.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

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.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

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.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Music is the framework around the silence.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

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

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

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

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

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

Food makes my mind sluggish.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging -- but that weren't sweet.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

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

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

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.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

I like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.

What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

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.

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

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

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.

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?

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

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

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

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

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

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

I always listen to what I can leave out.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

Play what you know and then play above that

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype....

Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

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.

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.

Sometimes [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there; if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it.

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

There are no wrong notes.

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive