I think I know what it is but don’t ask me to play it.
JOHN COLTRANEThe reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I’m trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven’t sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I’m trying to work through and get the one essential.
More John Coltrane Quotes
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Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that’s too bad.
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I’d like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
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Change is inevitable in music – things change.
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My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there’s no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am – my faith, my knowledge, my being.
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I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of people.
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When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.
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I want to be the force which is truly for good.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.
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I’ve always felt that even though a man was not a Christian, he still has to know the truth some way or another. Or if he was a Christian, he could know the truth. The truth itself doesn’t have any name on it to me. And each man has to find this for himself, I think.
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Don’t ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.
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Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
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I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.
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There is never any end, There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state.
JOHN COLTRANE -
The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I’m trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven’t sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I’m trying to work through and get the one essential.
JOHN COLTRANE -
One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.
JOHN COLTRANE -
I’m into scales right now.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
JOHN COLTRANE -
The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.
JOHN COLTRANE -
All of the technique doesn’t matter only if the feeling is right.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.
JOHN COLTRANE -
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.
JOHN COLTRANE -
All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
JOHN COLTRANE -
You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.
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Considering the great heritage in music that we have – the work of the giants of the past, the present, and the promise of those who are to come – I feel that we have every reason to face the future optimistically.
JOHN COLTRANE -
There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself… I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.
JOHN COLTRANE