Best 134 quotes of Miles Davis on MyQuotes

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.

Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.

Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

For me, music and life are all about style.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

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.

I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.

I did Bronislaw Kaper's tune. He wrote "On Green Dolphin Street." I mean, I did all those ballads, all them ballads from South America. All those tunes - the guitar concerto on Sketches Of Spain. All those are Spanish melodies. Some of them we made up ourselves.

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

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.

I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.

If I have a dynamite bass player - I have Darryl Jones - it's so easy to write for him because he's such a funky kid and he's gifted. He's like a little genius.

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!

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.

If you had to call it "unison", it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than "unison", it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.

If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved "D Train". We couldn't call it "D Train"; it's called "MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2". That's on the album.

I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me 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.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.