Playing jazz Quotes by Thelonious Monk

Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.

— Thelonious Monk

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

— Thelonious Monk

When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to…

— Thelonious Monk

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

— Thelonious Monk

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

— Thelonious Monk

I made the wrong mistakes

— Thelonious Monk

I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.

— Thelonious Monk

I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.

— Thelonious Monk

I always believed in being myself.

— Thelonious Monk

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

— Thelonious Monk

Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.

— Thelonious Monk

I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day...

— Thelonious Monk

I guess, you know, if I didn't make it with the piano, I guess I would've been the biggest bum.

— Thelonious Monk

Jazz is my adventure.

— Thelonious Monk

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

— Thelonious Monk