Thelonious Monk Quotes

I find my inspiration in myself.

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.

Jazz is my adventure.

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

I don't know what other people are doing - I just know about me.

I'd go stupid collecting and counting my money.

Miles'd got killed if he hit me.

I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.

I'm famous. Ain't that a bitch?

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by ... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

Those who want to know what sound goes into my music should come to NY and open their ears.

Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

I never though much about race.

We have two kids, my wife and myself.

The loudest noise in the world is silence.

Everyone is a genius at being themselves

I played the wrong wrong notes.

Monk's reasons for dancing during a performance: "I get tired sitting down at the piano! That way I can dig the rhythm better.

A genius is the one most like himself.

There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

I made the wrong mistakes

I don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can't develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don't have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.

I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.

You've been making the wrong mistakes.

I guess, you know, if I didn't make it with the piano, I guess I would've been the biggest bum.

It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!

The inside of the tune [the bridge] is the part that makes the outside sound good.

Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.