Quotes from Miles Davis

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

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

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

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.

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.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

I have to change. It's like a curse.

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.

For me, music and life are all about style.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

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!"

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

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

When I went in there, we used drum machine on "Time After Time" and "Human Nature".We don't use the drum machine to play a pattern. You play the pattern by being consistent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note – it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

He comes in on the beat and plays on top of the beat. I think when Prince makes love, he hears drums instead of Ravel.

It was Jimi Hendrix that I first got into when Betty Mabry turned me on to him.