Paul Desmond Quotes

• I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Jazz, Week

  52 Copy quote

• The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Simplicity, Important

  27 Copy quote

• I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Thinking, Mind

  17 Copy quote

• Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

  Paul Desmond

  Writing, Talking, Taught

  33 Copy quote

• Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

  Paul Desmond

  Play, People, Perfect

  22 Copy quote

• I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Musical, Jazz

  10 Copy quote

• Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.

  Paul Desmond

  Keys, Different, Balls

  17 Copy quote

• Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.

  Paul Desmond

  Glasses, Tunes, Want

  16 Copy quote

• I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Father, Age

  15 Copy quote

• It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo.

  Paul Desmond

  Solo, Supposed To Be

  15 Copy quote

• We used to get on planes, and they'd ask who we were, and we'd say, 'The Dave Brubeck Quartet', and they'd say, 'Who?' In later years they'd say, 'Oh', which amounts to the same thing.

  Paul Desmond

  Years, Dave, Used

  7 Copy quote

• Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over new York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says, 'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'

  Paul Desmond

  New York, Reading, Home

  8 Copy quote

• Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Elderly, Twenties

  9 Copy quote

• I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

  Paul Desmond

  Sleep, Wrestling, Rooms

  13 Copy quote

• We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

  Paul Desmond

  Style, Going Out, Jazz

  9 Copy quote

• I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.

  Paul Desmond

  Memorable, House, Purpose

  9 Copy quote

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