Dizzy Gillespie Quotes

Quotes about:

• Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Winning, Trying, Sound

  131 Copy quote

• As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Past, Feet, Musician

  105 Copy quote

• It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Taken, Play

  Quoted in N Hentoff Jazz Is (1978).

  66 Copy quote

• I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Careers, Sound

  74 Copy quote

• The idea of life is to give and receive.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Ideas, Giving, Life Is

  33 Copy quote

• I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  76 Copy quote

• The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Play, Knowing, Musician

  55 Copy quote

• Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Men, Serious

  68 Copy quote

• Jazz will be the classical music of the future.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Jazz, Classical Music

  27 Copy quote

• Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Gentleman, Jazz, Indifference

  41 Copy quote

• One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Jazz, Reason

  57 Copy quote

• Mutual respect is so important because as soon as it disappears in relations between you and the next person, there's trouble.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Important, Next, Trouble

  Dizzy Gillespie (2009). “To Be, Or Not-- to Bop”, p.127, U of Minnesota Press

  39 Copy quote

• Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Trouble, Mutual Respect, Mutual

  46 Copy quote

• You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Bird, World, Stealing

  57 Copy quote

• I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Essence, Play, Trying

  54 Copy quote

• They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Dance, Long

  41 Copy quote

• There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bepop, the second was homeopathy.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Two, Firsts, Revelations

  51 Copy quote

• Many critics always saw and heard that my style comes from Roy Eldridge, which is true. But for many things, not only how to play the trumpet but the way to choose the notes, how to play them and how to phrase all of them, I took that from Sweets [Edison]. He really brought something new to the trumpet.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Sweet, Play, Style

  40 Copy quote

• Everyone wants to put people on, I think. And get away with it! That's the thing: put people on and get away with it! That's a science in itself.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Thinking, People, Want

  5 Copy quote

• Learn to play the piano, man, and then you can figure out crazy solos of your own.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Crazy, Men, Play

  25 Copy quote

• I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be in that particular spot...You have many things to pick from when you're playing, so you try to train yourself to pick out the best things that you know.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Essence, Play, Trying

  21 Copy quote

• How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Jazz, Miles, Stage

  20 Copy quote

• Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Want, Bops, Jazz

  19 Copy quote

• I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Done, Jazz, Apologizing

  16 Copy quote

• We loved one another, man. I mean all those stories about the rift ... there was no question of a rift between Charlie Parker and me.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Mean, Men, Rift

  14 Copy quote

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