Quotes About Talent

As a young musician, you really want to play.

When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.

The real Liberace - and I'll preface this by saying that I didn't know the real one - was a man who didn't come from much. His father left him and his family for another woman. His father was a musician, which I thought was pretty interesting.

It's funny to find there are still people around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player. But you don't learn jazz in school.

What motivates me is just to do a really, really good job at something. If I were a better musician, I probably would've ended up as one.

I had a degree in economics but also thought of myself as a musician.

I actually was a musician in college, a composer and singer, and really intended to be the second coming of Leonard Bernstein when I got out.

I don't think I ever thought of growing up to be anything other than a musician. There really wasn't a plan B. Well, a kind of a distant plan B was to be a Formula One driver, but there really wasn't an entry point.

Jimmy Slyde was more a musician than a dancer; Greg Hines was more musician than dancer.

Everybody knew James Brown. Every musician dreamed of being in his band.

I'm lazy. I don't practice enough. I do other stuff. I'm not a musician's musician, and I don't necessarily know if I want to be. When I hear something and want to work on it, then that's what my project will be.

If you're a musician, there's no instrument that can be withheld from you. If you're drawn to it, develop the talent for it.

If I could be a musician, I'd do it. I love singing.

Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I'm a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?

The fact that I'm not a good musician - I throw it around, tell people that - it doesn't matter that much. It only matters to me, because I idolized good musicians. I absolutely worshiped them.

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

Country music's always had the best musicians in any format of music, and I always gravitated toward that, stuff that was musically interesting.

Passionate musicians only come from passionate five-year-olds.

I rather create better music and let that talk, than me going out and dissing other musicians in public.

Our parents were musicians.

You must remember I grew up around music. Three of my family were musicians.

Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.

I mean, look how many musicians have come through and played beside me, and I'm workin' and they're not.