Steve Lacy People Quotations

When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.

Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.

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.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.