Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thelonious Monk

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

Thelonious Monk

I don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Thelonious Monk

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

Thelonious Monk

After two takes you're imitating yourself.

Thelonious Monk

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

Thelonious Monk

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

Thelonious Monk

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Thelonious Monk

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

Thelonious Monk

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

Terry Riley

The highest point of music for me is to become in a place where there is no desire, no craving, wanting to do anything else. It is the best place you have ever been, and yet there is nothing there.

Terry McMillan

I'd crack up without my music. It's the best company you can have, really. It don't say 'no' or 'maybe,' or ask no questions.

Terry Pratchett

After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four- And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.

Kin Hubbard

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Melissa Etheridge

The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.

Michelle Branch

I would love to be in musical theater and be on Broadway. If someone were to offer me a position to do something like that, I wouldnt pass it down. Im a huge fan of musicals and I really want to do that.

Michelle Branch

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

Michael Tippett

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

Michael Tilson Thomas

The world changes when there's music in it.

Michael Tilson Thomas

It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are.

Michael Stipe

I'm not homosexual, I'm not hetrosexual, I'm just sexual.

Michael Stipe

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

Michael Ondaatje

If any of you on your journeys see her-shout to me, whistle...he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere he could hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as if he were no longer on stage.

Michael Ondaatje

What night gave Rafael was a formlessness in which everything had a purpose. As if darkness had a hidden musical language.

MC Hammer

If kids say I'm just a gospel rapper, I won't be able to get in their cars.

MC Hammer

I intend to put them on the charts.

MC Hammer

This is it for a winner, Dance to this and you're gonna get thinner, Move slide your rump, Just for a minute let's all do the bump, Bump, bump, bump yeah.

Meat Loaf

I'm asthmatic. I was a lot bigger back then, and I still get winded on stage today. But I've learned how to pace it now. I have musical breaks in there.

Max Roach

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

Max Roach

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

Max Roach

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

May Sarton

Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.

Matthew Shipp

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

Matthew Shipp

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.