Quotes from Miles Davis

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

They [police] do me like that all the time! "What you work for?".

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

With "We Are The World," I can't even eat when I watch that on television. If I'm eatin' some food, I have to put it down. I feel very strongly about that.

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays "My Funny Valentine" on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play "Jean Pierre" with the changes on celeste.

If you're not nervous, you're not paying attention.

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.

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

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

That was my gift -- having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go letting them play what they knew, and above it.

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

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

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

Being rebellious and black, a nonconformist, being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, whatever else you want to call it -- I was all those things and more. But I was playing the fuck out of my horn and had a great group, so I didn't get recognition based only on a rebel image.

See, music is about style.

Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn't happening before they found out about it -- which most times is always late, and they didn't have nothing to do with it happening. Then, they try to take all the credit, try to cut everybody black out.

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

Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it.