T. S. Monk Quotes

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

Gazing into the mirror, I saw myself as I was-a black silhouette in the room, a woman whose darkness had completely leaked through.

Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

The loudest noise in the world is silence.

There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.

Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.

My parents were both from Scotland, but had been resident in Lower Canada some time before their marriage, which took place in Montreal; and in that city I spent most of my life.

I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

A genius is the one most like himself.

It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!

I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day.

... in the end, Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divine in female form.

All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.

I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.

That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.

An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom every body is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.

He was like an undead boomerang. A zomberang.

It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

After two takes you're imitating yourself.

I don't know what other people are doing - I just know about me.

Sunset is the saddest light there is.

Those who want to know what sound goes into my music should come to NY and open their ears.

When you can't go forward, and you can't go backward, and you can't stay where you are without killing off something deep and vital in yourself, you are on the edge of creation.

I found that I could not climb my way up to God in a blaze of doing and performing. Rather, I had to descend into the depths of myself and find God there in the darkness of troubled waters.

I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.

The majority of juice-heads and winos and junkies arent musicians.

Your "I CAN" is more important than your IQ.

If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.

I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.

It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.

It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey.

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

The Bishop, as I have remarked, was not very dignified on all occasions, and sometimes acted in such a manner as would not have appeared well in public.

I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.

Yes, here I am returning, the woman who bore herself to the bottom and back. Who wanted to swim like dolphins, leaping waves and diving. Who wanted only to belong to herself.

Stories are amazing and powerful because they can resonate with people depending on their needs and experiences and speak truths we need to hear in that moment in time.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?

The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

The inside of the tune [the bridge] is the part that makes the outside sound good.