Jazz Quotes

Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And th...

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Thelonious ...

…he didn’t needs words or even want them because he knew how they could lie, could heat your blood a...

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don’t just say I’m grown and ought to know. I don’t. I...

Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weap...

I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.”“Don’t we all. Look. Be what you want--- ...

it ain't as hard as picking cotton

The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick t...

Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the d...

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat ...

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that co...

I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be bet...

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards...

He has only heard what I felt.

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings mak...

She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it t...

Salsa, classic rock, soul music, jazz... all of that was a part of my education in making hip-hop mu...

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body’s breath, and the stri...

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude t...

For most Americans, poetry plays no role in their everyday lives. But also for most Americans, conte...

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms o...

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has...

...I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds...

In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the...

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

I believe in dressing for the occasion. There's a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time fo...

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a con...

Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There's classical, and then there's jaz...

I love singing jazz. I don't like the idea that classical music should be over here and jazz should ...

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. T...

Amy [Winehouse] changed pop music forever, I remember knowing there was hope, and feeling not alone ...

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chantin...

Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you’ll never know.

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

If it sounds good, it is good.

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light...

It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it r...

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas sto...