Jazz  Quotes

• Barry Harris - "There are a lot of things I'm proud of, but the proudest have yet to come."
• Eddie Harris - "If you believe, you will. If you don't, you won't."
• Coleman Hawkins - "Music should always be an adventure."
• Isaac Hayes - "Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it's because music is fun, plain & simple."
• Isaac Hayes - "Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go & what you can do."
• Roy Haynes - "You must own it to play it."
• Percy Heath - "Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music."
• Skitch Henderson - "I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along."
• Jon Hendricks - "Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play."
• Jon Hendricks - "Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before."
• Dave Holland - "I think music needs to be of its time & speak to that time."
• Dave Holland - "Just allow your feelings to go with the music & you'll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly."
• Dave Holland - "I think that what is important is that the music be honest & direct & that it is relevant to today."
• Dave Holland - "Jazz has such great feeling & emotional content it really doesn't require technical understanding."

• Billie Holiday - "A kiss that is never tasted, is forever & ever wasted."
• Billie Holiday - "I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do."
• Billie Holiday - "Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."
• Billie Holiday - "I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old."
• Billie Holliday - "I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know."
• Billie Holiday - "You can't copy anybody & end with anything. If you copy, you're working without any real feeling.
• Billie Holiday - "I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been."
• Oliver Wendell Holmes - "Music is to the soul what water is to the body."
• Freddie Hubbard - "Dizzy used to tell me I'm playing too hard. He'd say to not give everything. Miles told me that too."
• Freddie Hubbard - "When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles & Dizzy it was very difficult."
• Freddie Hubbard - "They always want to sell me as a hard bopper."
• Victor Hugo - "Music expresses that which cannot be said & on which it is impossible to be silent."
• Charlie Hunter - "The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit."
• Bobby Hutcherson - "The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it."
• Charlie Hunter - "Yeah, it's more like playing what you think is appropriate for the moment, not forcing any particular style."
• Milt Jackson - "If I'm not saying it in four choruses or less, then I'm not saying it."
• Samuel L Jackson - "What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz."
• Ahmad Jamal - "The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people say about your work."
• Ahmad Jamal - "Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play."
• Al Jarreau - "Once you discover that you can, then you must."
• Al Jarreau - "You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues."

• Keith Jarrett - "Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms."
• Keith Jarrett - "I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it."
• Keith Jarrett - "Jazz is there & gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple."
• Bruce Johnson - "There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music & as an art form."
• J J Johnson - "Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window & have a good look at Jazz."
• Hank Jones - "I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically."
• John Paul Jones - "Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself."
• Quincy Jones - "Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, young & old shared a little of what he is good at doing."
• Stanley Jordan - "Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles."
• John F. Kennedy - The arts are at the center of a nation's purpose & a test of civilization."
• Stan Kenton - "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
• Stan Kenton - "When you get to the top, don't forget to send the elevator down for the next guy."
• Alicia Keys - "I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play."
• Dave Kikoski - "To get the music the way you want it, there's a lot of work involved."
• Dave Kikoski - "For me, the main thing is spontaneity & taking chances."
• Mary Kingsley - "Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition."
• Roland Kirk - "When I die I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot & beautiful people to smoke me."
• Roland Kirk - "So until we see you again, bright moments & keep searchin' for your mystery note on the universal piano of life."
• Lee Konitz - "Sound is the first thing that we tune into."
• Lee Konitz - "I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard."
• Lee Konitz - "As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz."
• Lee Konitz - "Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet."
• Lee Konitz - "Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary."