Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.
JOHN COLTRANEWorking with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.
More John Coltrane Quotes
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Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.
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Damn the rules, it’s the feeling that counts.
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Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
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I want to be the force which is truly for good.
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I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. You know, I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.
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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.
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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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My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.
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All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.
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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.
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You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.
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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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I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of people.
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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.
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I’m into scales right now.
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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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When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.
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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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Change is inevitable in music – things change.
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The real risk is not changing. I have to feel that I’m after something. If I make money, fine. But I’d rather be striving. It’s the striving, man, it’s that I want.
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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 think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.
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God breathes through us so completely, So gently we hardly feel it, yet it is our everything.
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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.
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All of the technique doesn’t matter only if the feeling is right.
JOHN COLTRANE