It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling. - Bill Evans
I never practice my guitar — from time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat. - Wes Montgomery
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions. - Johnny Griffin
Miles’d got killed if he hit me. - Thelonious Monk
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini. - Paul Desmond
As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don’t agree with what they’re playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all. - Wynton Marsalis