John Coltrane
There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.Collection: Beautiful
When you are playing with someone who really has something to say, even though they may be otherwise quite different in style, there’s one thing that remains constant. And that is the tension of the experience, that electricity, that kind of feeling that is a lift sort of feeling. No matter where it happens, you know when that feeling comes upon you, and it makes you feel happy.Collection: Feelings
I want to be the force which is truly for good.Collection: Want
...That is one of the main causes of this arrogance: the idea of power. Then you lose your true power which is to be part of all, and the only way you can be part of all is to understand it. And when you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and say, 'I know what you're going to teach me'.Collection: Music
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.Collection: Spiritual
If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing.Collection: Blue
... and it's always been a thing with me to feel that all men know the truth, see? ... The truth itself doesn't have a name on it. To me. Each man has to find this for himself, I think. I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be... I'm not interested in trying to say what it will be, I don't know. But I believe that good will only bring good.Collection: Believe
Change is inevitable in music - things change.Collection: Inevitable Change
Keep a thing happenin' all throughout.Collection: Things Happen
I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.Collection: Thinking
The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.Collection: Play
I'm into scales right now.Collection: Music
Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.Collection: Music
Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.Collection: Music
We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive tasteCollection: Dedication
Considering the great heritage in music that we have - the work of the giants of the past, the present, and the promise of those who are to come - I feel that we have every reason to face the future optimistically.Collection: Past
I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play itCollection: Inspirational
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.Collection: Music
The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.Collection: Music
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.Collection: Music
Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.Collection: Fun