Sonny Rollins Quotations

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

I can name a lot of people whose productive, whose creativity dies when they got L.A. Maybe it's too laid back. It's too comfortable.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.

I guess I'm fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize 'I guess', because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.