Jazz Quotes

I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us, you hated the idea of jazz.'

I am the worlds laziest writer.

I have a secret love of jazz.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

I thought, If I'm gonna run a jazz club, if I've got Miles Davis' posters in my bar, I should at least know what his horn sounds like.

I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.

Listen to her voice, don't look at her.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage.

Jazz is not background music.

It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.

Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.

...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.

You have to look good.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

I wasn't so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That's why I'm broke.

I actually find a lot of parallels in jazz and cartooning.

I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.

It's either hip or it ain't.

You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.

I think we as human beings need to be able to appreciate each other's differences and I think jazz really takes us in that direction.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

In jazz improv, there is no such thing as wrong notes, only notes that are better chosen and it's not about the note you play, it's about the note you play next.

I'm not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I'd rather be figured out.

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.

Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.

I love good rock'n'roll, blues and jazz, gospel, and a little reggae.

In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from.

Where I grew up, Bob Wills and his western swing was very popular. And western swing is not that far from jazz and blues.

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.

I don't understand the music but I certainly understand the girl singer!

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.