Miles Davis Quotes

Miles Davis shares cool, creative musings on music and art that inspire a fresh take on jazz.

36 quotes

1. 'For me, music and life are all about style.'

2. 'I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?'

3. The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

4. 'If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.'

5. 'A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.'

6. 'Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin'

7. 'Who's that motherfucker? He can't play shit!'

8. 'You a motherfucker.'

9. 'He plays like somebody is standing on his foot.'

10. 'He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.'

11. 'Why'd you put that white bitch on there?'

12. 'You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played.'

13. 'I'll play it and tell you what it is later.'

14. 'Listen baby, when I say later, I mean it! Later!'

15. 'There are no wrong notes.'

16. 'My ego only needs a good rhythm section.' On being asked what he looked for in musicians.

17. 'When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit.'

18. 'Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth.'

19. 'It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.''

20. 'Don't play what's there, play what's not there.'

21. I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

22. I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.

23. Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.

24. I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

25. If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

26. My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.

27. I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing.

28. When I'm playing, I'm never through. It's unfinished. I like to find a place to leave for someone else to finish it. That's where the high comes in.

29. I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

30. Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

31. You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

32. I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do."

33. Music is the framework around the silence.

34. What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.

35. Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.

36. With "We Are The World," I can't even eat when I watch that on television. If I'm eatin' some food, I have to put it down. I feel very strongly about that.