• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Miles Davis

Related Topics

MusicPlay

Popular Authors

Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

Prevoius| Next

More Miles Davis Quotes

• 

  When kids don’t learn about their own heritage in school, they just don’t care about school… But you won’t see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

  MILES DAVIS
  ChildrenHeritageHistoryLearningOurselvesStory
• 

  Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ’em a lot of money.

  MILES DAVIS
  ArtCelebrityFormManMoneyMusician
• 

  Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

  MILES DAVIS
  AnswerCallMyselfPhone
• 

  If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

  MILES DAVIS
  MyselfUnderstandYourself
• 

  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.

  MILES DAVIS
  HeartKnownMusicianPersonPlayYourself
• 

  There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

  MILES DAVIS
  NotePlaceWrong
• 

  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.

  MILES DAVIS
  ArtisticMusicPeopleReachThinking
• 

  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.

  MILES DAVIS
  ImaginationMyselfPatiencePeoplePlay
• 

  If you have to ask, you’ll never know.

  MILES DAVIS
  UnknownYourself
• 

  In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

  MILES DAVIS
  BestDiscriminationMusicianMyselfWhite
• 

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

  MILES DAVIS
  AppearanceCareHimselfMyself
• 

  At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

  MILES DAVIS
  InstrumentMusicianOneselfThankful
• 

  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.

  MILES DAVIS
  ArtGreatnessMusicPlay
• 

  I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

  MILES DAVIS
  ThinkingTolerance
• 

  Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

  MILES DAVIS
  DrugsFeelingMusic
• 

  Music is the framework around the silence.

  MILES DAVIS
  FrameworkMusicPerspectiveSilence