Jazz Quotes

1344 quotes by 665 authors

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen. — Dave Brubeck
Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced… — Dave Brubeck
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts. — Ken Burns
We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz? — Ken Burns
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. — Samuel Butler
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn… — Truman Capote
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like… — Ray Charles
I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The worst crime is faking it. — Kurt Cobain
I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. — Leonard Cohen
There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the… — Tori Amos
Where words fail, music speaks. — Hans Christian Andersen
When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic… — Ian Anderson
As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually. — Julie Andrews
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat. — Carmen McRae
The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz. — John Lewis
[Jazz singing] is like pornography. You can't say what it is, but you know it when you see it. — Kurt Elling
Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come… — Quincy Jones
When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent's disapproval. — Jeff Beck
If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight. — Betty Carter

Who Wrote These Jazz Quotes

665 authors contributed a total of 1,344 Jazz Quotes, led by these top contributors: