Jazz Monk Quotes & Sayings

You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig? — Thelonious Monk

I got into music when I was a little boy. My dad was always into jazz. I got my education from him. The first time I listened to jazz, he gave me a Thelonious Monk record. It was so different from anything I had ever heard. It took me a while to understand it, and I liked that. I liked the fact that it wasn't immediately palatable. — Ted King

Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk — John Lewis

The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o'clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus years non stop, just get up out of his sick bed, crawl up on the bandstand and play, the thing that would make Duke Ellington, the thing that would make Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, the thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this, and they did give their lives, is that it gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, there's just nothing else you're going to taste that's as sweet. — Wynton Marsalis

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll ... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing true north? — Tony Kushner

I can't go back to who I was before the war," he eventually said. "And I can't be who I was during the war. And if I'm not either of those men, I'm not sure what I'm left with. — Lisa Kleypas

Jesus took the tree of death so you could have the tree of life. — Timothy Keller

Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop. — Jack Kerouac

The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that. — T. S. Monk

I made the wrong mistakes — Thelonious Monk

Jazz music and, more specifically, jazz musicians, are my artistic heroes. I want to be the Thelonious Monk of acting. He had no concern for how well he was received. He played whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He just wasn't interested in achieving the good opinion of his audience. That's the Holy Grail of acting; of any art form. — Trevor St. John

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

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

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive. — B.F. Skinner

I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day ... — Thelonious Monk

No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Thelonious Monk that he sealed in a tin can and labeled Campbell's Cream of Piano Soup. Later I hear he killed himself to avoid the draft. — Tom Robbins

Jazz is my adventure. — Thelonious Monk

Love's true nature remains forever beyond the grasp of all our faculties. It is far greater than any feeling or emotion and completely surpasses any act of human kindness ... The realization of love always remains mysterious. — Gerald May

In high school I was a jazz nerd, listened to a lot of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and stuff like that. Maybe in Harry Pussy I was listening to more horn players. — Bill Orcutt

The piano ain't got no wrong notes. — Thelonious Monk

The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called 'Monk's Dream' almost every day from the time I was born. — Benny Green

He [Thelonious Monk] played each note as though astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was correcting an error and this touch in turn became an error to be corrected and so the tune never quite ended up the way it was meant to. — Geoff Dyer

Come, Spirits she murmured; and was instantly fortified by a sense of the presence of the things that aren't there. There were the beautiful drowned statues, there were the glens and hills of an undiscovered country; there were divine musical notes, which, struck high up in the air, made one's heart beat with delight at the assurance that the world of things that aren't there was splendidly vigorous and far more real than the other. She felt that one never spoke of the things that mattered, but carried them about, until a note of music, or a sentence or a sight, joined hands with them. — Virginia Woolf

Where's jazz going? I don't know. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens. — Thelonious Monk

And what he contemplated was death. Some people complained when death came top early and claimed a child, a young mother, or a sailor with a family to provide for. He'd never understood that. Of course, it was a tragedy for those left behind and for the person who'd been robbed of the greater part of life. But it wasn't unfair. Death was beyond such notions. It seemed to him that the bereaved often forgot their grief at a death in favor of railing fruitlessly against life's injustices. After all, no one would dream of saying that the wind was unfair to the trees and the flowers. True, you might feel uneasy when the sun switched off its light, or ice gave your ship a dangerous list. But indignant, outraged, or angry, no. It was pointless. Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men. — Carsten Jensen

Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently. — Thelonious Monk

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on. — Ted King

Jazz is freedom. You think about that. — Thelonious Monk

What I think it really means is: I'm a teacher. I am a teacher. I teach all the time, as you do and as all of you do-whether we know it or not, whether we take responsibility for it or not. I hold nothing back because I want to see that light go off. I like to see the children say, 'I never thought of that before.' And I think, 'I've got them!' — Maya Angelou

There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center. — John Stott

At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand. — Thelonious Monk

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street. — Miles Davis

Miles'd got killed if he hit me. — Thelonious Monk

I've always wanted to go where the work was or where I was wanted. The idea that it can be planned is one I let go of a long time ago. — Julianne Moore

I think that among my friends I'm known as being a hard worker; I think if you want to be an actor, there can't be any compromise. You have to work all day, every day. It's not a 9-5 job. There's always something to learn. — Jeremy Irvine

Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz. — Thelonious Monk

First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group. — Paul Feyerabend

The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett — Will Schwalbe