Sonny Rollins Quotes

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.

My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.

I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society.

You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

I guess I'm fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize 'I guess', because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.

I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.

I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.