Thelonious Quotes & Sayings

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

I never though much about race. — 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

I'd go stupid collecting and counting my money. — Thelonious Monk

Anybody talented in any way - they're called eccentric. — Thelonious Monk

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

Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk". — Charles Simic

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

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name. — Matthew Shipp

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

I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is - unsociable hours, plus general creativity. — Jamie Cullum

When I present the Charlie Parker book, I do a call and response that works quite well. With the Thelonious Monk book, I play the music and work with kids in a group to create a color wheel and show how the wheel can be mapped on a 12-tone chromatic scale. — Chris Raschka

[Thelonious] Monk is a subject in itself. I mean, most piano players in most big bands sit down and they play with the band, you know. But Monk would just sit there like this. And all of a sudden there'd be a pause from all the trumpets and everything and Monk would go 'plink!' like that. And everybody would go 'Yeah! — Ray Brown

Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it. — Thelonious Monk

A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination. — Thelonious Monk

I find my inspiration in myself. — Thelonious Monk

I played the wrong wrong notes. — Thelonious Monk

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

Everyone is a genius at being themselves — Thelonious Monk

I'm famous. Ain't that a bitch? — Thelonious Monk

The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original. — Steve Lacy

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

The loudest noise in the world is silence. — Thelonious Monk

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances. — Thelonious Monk

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. — 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. — Thelonious Monk

After two takes you're imitating yourself. — Thelonious Monk

The majority of juice-heads and winos and junkies arent musicians. — 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

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

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

Jazz is my adventure. — 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

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

At first I didn't understand what [Thelonious Monk] was doing, but I went back again, and what I can say about Monk is that I heard ancient Africa in his music. When he played, it was like a ballet. He captured the sound of the universe. Monk could take a triad, a simple chord, and make it sound dissonant. I'm sure that element he had in his piano was part of the two years he spent traveling with his mother in gospel music in the tent shows. — Randy Weston

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me. — Mose Allison

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

When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up. — Thelonious Monk

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

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

I made the wrong mistakes — Thelonious Monk

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom. — Thelonious Monk

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

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

His name, even, is part of the marketing scheme, I mean, Thelonious Sphere Monk - how can you think of a better name to fit his style of playing? — Matthew Shipp

There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk. — Maira Kalman

All musicians are potential band leaders. — Thelonious Monk

I always believed in being myself. — Thelonious Monk

There was a lot that was tricky about playing with [Thelonious Monk]. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. You really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well. — Roy Haynes

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

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

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

A genius is the one most like himself. — Thelonious Monk

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

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

Be-bop wasn't developed in any deliberate way. — Thelonious Monk

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

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture. — Thelonious Monk

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. — Thelonious Monk

I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own. — Tom Waits

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians. — Thelonious Monk

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

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues. — Eric Clapton

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

Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts. — Thelonious Monk

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man. — Chick Corea

Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy — Thelonious Monk

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

You've been making the wrong mistakes. — Thelonious Monk

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

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

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

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! — Thelonious Monk

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

We have two kids, my wife and myself. — Thelonious Monk

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. — Thelonious Monk