"Jass and Jassism" [article] - New Orleans Times-Picayune, 1918

[jazz is the] brotherhood of those who, devoid of harmonic and even of melodic instinct, love to fairly wallow in noise. [it is a] manifestation of a low streak in man's tastes that has not yet come out in civilization's wash.

Julia Stiles as Kat Stratford, 10 Things I Hate About You

Kat Stratford: You can't just buy me a guitar every time you screw up, you know?

Patrick Verona: Yeah, I know. But then, you know, there's always drums, and bass, and maybe even one day a tambourine.

Cat Stevens

I always knew I would look back on the times I cried, and laugh; but I never thought I would look back on the times I laughed, and cry.

Blind Melon, Soul One

You said you left to find yourself But I never, no I never got the chance to say goodbye.

Morgan Freeman as Red, The Shawshank Redemption

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

Thelonious Monk

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.

Kurt Cobain [In Utero (unused liner notes), 1993]

If you’re a sexist, racist, homophobe or basically an asshole, don’t buy this CD. I don’t care if you like me, I hate you.

Kurt Cobain [Incesticide (liner notes), 1992]

If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.

Plato

For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes.

-Plato c. 380 BCE The Republic, Book IV, 424c

Dolly Parton

When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.

The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.

Oscar Fischinger

Music is not limited to the world of sound. There exists a music of the visual world.

William Congreve

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

Beverly Sills

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Lou Reed

There is no God. And Brian Wilson is his son.

Buddy Rich

I consider every drummer that ever played before me an influence, in every way.

Leonard Cohen

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

Plato

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.

Virgil Thomson

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Cannonball Adderley

You know sometimes we’re not prepared for adversity. When it happens sometimes we’re caught short. We don’t know exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we don’t know just what to do when adversity takes over and I have advice for all of us. I got it from my pianist Joe Zawinul who wrote this tune and it sounds like what you’re supposed to say when you have that kind of problem and its called Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.

Download Mercy, Mercy, Mercy - Cannonball Adderley Quintet - Live at 'The Club' from iTunes.

Miles Davis

If you understood everything I said, you'd be me.