Miles Davis

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

— Miles Davis

I’ll play it and tell you what it is later.

— Miles Davis

I can't tell... All those white tenor players sound alike to me.

— Miles Davis

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

— Miles Davis

"You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname) … Louis has been through all kinds of styles. That's good tuba, by the way. You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing. I also love the way he sings.

— Miles Davis

I love Pops, I love the way he sings, the way he plays - everything he does, except when he says something against modern-jazz music.

— Miles Davis

Coleman Hawkins told me never to play with someone older than me, and I never have. With older players, there's no force, no drive. With younger players, it's not that you know it all, or I know it all—it's I'm trying to learn it all.

— Miles Davis

I know what the power of silence is. When I used to play in clubs, everybody was loud; there was a lot of noise. So I would take my mute off the microphone, and I would play something so soft that you could hardly hear it... and you talk about listening. Roy Eldridge did that. He's one of my favorites.

— Miles Davis

The only thing I'm interested in is the music and the musicians. I don't acknowledge applause 'cause I'm giving them something. They're not giving me anything with their applause. Can I write that down?

— Miles Davis

Is that what you wanted, Alfred?

— Miles Davis

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 Davis

He never wasted a melody. He never wasted a phrase. He and Duke Ellington changed the whole sound. There is no way to describe it because there's nobody on this earth that can do that anymore. What he did to the texture of an orchestration, what he did with a pop song is like writing an original piece. Students will discover him. They'll have to take his music apart layer by layer. That's how they'll know what kind of genius he was.

— Miles Davis

For me, music and life are all about style.

— Miles Davis

I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?

— Miles Davis

Why'd you put that white bitch on there?

— Miles Davis

When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit.

— Miles Davis

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

— 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

Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth.

— Miles Davis

It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.'

— Miles Davis

He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

— Miles Davis

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

— Miles Davis

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery.

— Miles Davis

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

— Miles Davis

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

— Miles Davis