John Coltrane Quotes

One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.

Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious.

The real risk is not changing. I have to feel that I'm after something. If I make money, fine. But I'd rather be striving. It's the striving, man, it's that I want.

God breathes through us so completely...So gently we hardly feel it...yet it is our everything.

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

I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of people.

Damn the rules, it's the feeling that counts.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be - at least, this is what I want to do.

Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.

All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing.

Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

I want to be the force which is truly for good.

Change is inevitable in music - things change.

I'm into scales right now.

Keep a thing happenin' all throughout.

Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.

I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.