My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups…I want to speak to their souls.
JOHN COLTRANEThe 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.
More John Coltrane Quotes
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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 -
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 -
Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.
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.
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 -
Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
JOHN COLTRANE -
I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be – at least, this is what I want to do.
JOHN COLTRANE -
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.
JOHN COLTRANE -
Damn the rules, it’s the feeling that counts.
JOHN COLTRANE -
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.
JOHN COLTRANE -
I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I’m doing, the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there’s some feeling of communication, it isn’t necessary that it be understood.
JOHN COLTRANE -
All of the technique doesn’t matter only if the feeling is right.
JOHN COLTRANE -
I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of people.
JOHN COLTRANE






