Miles Davis Music 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.

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.

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!

Music is an addiction.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

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.

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

There are no wrong notes.

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

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

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

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

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.

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

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

Always look ahead, but never look back.

...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.

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

Music is the framework around the silence.

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

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

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

To keep creating you have to be about change.