Best 14 quotes of Paul Desmond on MyQuotes

Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.

I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over new York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says, 'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'

The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.