Cecil Taylor Quotations

I understand about the relative strengths of people, and I don't think people have to be anything. They can be nothin' if they want to be.

The quality of life, values that go down to doin' that, that's the issue.

Sometimes when it goes really well, you wonder, who's that at the piano?

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it.

If you take the creation of music and the creation of your own life values as your overall goal, then living becomes a musical process.

To feel is perhaps the most terrifying thing in this society.

I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

Rhythm is the life of space of time danced through.

In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.

Doesn't that fool know I recorded that song because I like it?

To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.

See I'm not interested in appealing to the larger masses of people, because what the White man shows us is that he will do anything to make money.