Best quotes by Miles Davis

For me, music and life are all about style.

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

That was my gift . . . having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

I think the greatest sound in the world is the human voice.

Play what you know and then play above that

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.

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

Food makes my mind sluggish.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

I like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

Sometimes, if you ask people to "go downstairs and get me this or that," they'll say, "It's rainin" or "It might rain," or "There's some bumpy roads on the road," or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you're supposed to say, "Damn, you did that?"

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Music is an addiction.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?

You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

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

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.

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.

I still got my Ferrari.

If I hear a song like "Time After Time." I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, "God damnnnnn!"

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

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.

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

Sometimes [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there; if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it.

Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.

Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

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.

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

Some musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don't know what to tell a person that can't - if you can't tell a person what you're talkin' about when they're rushin' or droppin' the tempo, you get somebody else.

If you're going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.

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

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

There are no wrong notes.

Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

That's the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

I said to [Lionel] Richie, "Man, my wife says you must really respect women because you write such beautiful love songs."

We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

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

I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

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

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

If you had to call it "unison", it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than "unison", it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.

I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved "D Train". We couldn't call it "D Train"; it's called "MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2". That's on the album.

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.