If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.
MILES DAVISDon’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
More Miles Davis Quotes
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Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.
MILES DAVIS -
Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.
MILES DAVIS -
I always listen to what I can leave out.
MILES DAVIS -
In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
MILES DAVIS -
If I hear a song like “Time After Time.” I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin’ this song. I said, “God damnnnnn!”
MILES DAVIS -
Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.
MILES DAVIS -
I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
MILES DAVIS -
You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
MILES DAVIS -
I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.
MILES DAVIS -
There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.
MILES DAVIS -
Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.
MILES DAVIS -
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 -
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 -
We don’t play to be seen. I’m addicted to music, not audiences.
MILES DAVIS -
I don’t pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself…and I’m too vain to play anything I think is bad.
MILES DAVIS -
People will go for anything they don’t understand if it’s got enough hype.
MILES DAVIS -
A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it.
MILES DAVIS -
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
MILES DAVIS -
Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
MILES DAVIS -
I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.
MILES DAVIS -
The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.
MILES DAVIS -
Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
MILES DAVIS -
You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.
MILES DAVIS -
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
MILES DAVIS -
I can’t write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don’t never write for myself.
MILES DAVIS -
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