Sonny Rollins Quotations

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.

But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn.

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.

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.

Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

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.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

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

I guess 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've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.

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.

My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.

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

I am always happy to be practicing. Period, ... I enjoy just playing my horn and going into the type of meditation that playing involves. It puts me mentally in a place that is always transcendent and above real life. I love playing just for myself. It's a great experience.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.

Playing in public engenders new paths in your brain that you won't get playing alone. In other words, I can learn something playing in public in five seconds. If I was learning it in private, it might take me three months to get.

There are a lot of jazz musicians, however, who do have to go to Europe and most of their work is in Europe. That's not true for me.

We were right on the margins of society. Who really cared about jazz?

As the years went by and jazz got more popular and social conditions changed, you were able to have jazz as a topic introduced into the music curriculum in universities, ... I think that one thing that hip-hop and jazz have in common is that they are both coming out of the minority subculture and we've faced some of the same problems. They are attacked in different ways . . . but they are a minority in a majority culture, so they are unfortunately discriminated against by the larger portion of the majority community.

So the people over there have a very advanced appreciation of music and they recognize the power and the beauty and the wonderfulness of jazz.

The whole creation of jazz is sort of leading toward the ultimate. I'm not trying to be self-aggrandizing here, but I think that the jazz soloist is the pinnacle of what jazz is about.

A lot of guys died very early. Very few guys, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, very few of those guys reached my age of 67, which I am at the present.

'St. Thomas' is actually an island melody, sort of a traditional island melody, so all I did was sort of make my arrangement on it.

It was a distinct honor because of the people inducted. Some were such giants of the music. I didn't really feel worthy to be included with Fats Waller.

If you could do that, it's great to do it. And a lot of great musicians have done it. A lot of musicians get to a point and stay in that groove all of their career. I have just not been able to do it because I don't think I'm a good enough musician. Someone was criticizing Miles, and Miles said, 'The truth is, it's much more difficult for me to play the way I did in 1947. It's really a physical thing. Sure, I like to experiment, but it's really a physical element.' He brought up a good point. That kind of playing, you've got to be young, in a way. It demands a certain youthful vigor.

I remember hearing that song around the house, and on the radio and everything, ... Wow, I haven't heard that record in so many years. It's one of my earliest memories of jazz. I believe in things like reincarnation, and it struck a chord someplace in my back lives or something.

I look at all that from the inside, so you'd probably have to ask someone else.

I don't think jazz should try to change. I think jazz is varied enough and there is so many different kinds of jazz. So jazz doesn't need to change.

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.

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.

We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.

How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

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

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

...this is my dilemma. I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever finished - there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, you might get into one thing, but then, hey, everything has implications! You can hear the next level. And that's how I feel about improvising - there's always another level.

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.

The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

I hate music. I wasted my life.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that, because there are not to many words to describe the real deep inner part of a human beingI want to be at that place where everything is blotted out and where creativity happens, and to get there I practice, you know I'm a prolific practicer, I still practice every dayYou have to have the skills, then you want to not think when you're playing, that's when you let whatever deep level of creativity, spirituality, I mean, you know these words are so inadequate these days but you want to get to this place where they exist.