Jazz Quotes

...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
~ Bill Evans

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
~ Charles Mingus

Jazz is a feeling, more than anything else. It isn't music, it's language...
~ Enos Payne

Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny.
~ Frank Zappa

Only play what you hear. If you don't hear anything, don't play anything.
~ Chick Corea

Boxing is like jazz, the better it is, the less people appreciate it.
~ George Foreman

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise...
~ George Gershwin

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.
~ Dizzy Gillespie

I'm not here to raise hippie consciousness, I'm here to wet some panties.
~ Jaco Pastorius

Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul; all the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.
~ John McLaughlin

[Jazz singing] is like pornography. You can't say what it is, but you know it when you see it.
~ Kurt Elling

Man, if you have to ask what it (jazz) is, you'll never know.
~ Louis Armstrong

When you're creating your own shit, even the sky ain't the limit.
~ Miles Davis

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.
~ Thelonius Monk

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
~ Miles Davis