Top 36 John Coltrane Quotes
#2. God breathes through us so completely ... So gently we hardly feel it ... yet it is our everything.
John Coltrane
#3. Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious.
John Coltrane
#5. There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself ... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.
John Coltrane
#6. All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
John Coltrane
#7. I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.
John Coltrane
#8. I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it
John Coltrane
#9. There is never any end ... There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state.
John Coltrane
#10. The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.
John Coltrane
#11. The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
John Coltrane
#12. Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft
John Coltrane
#13. One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.
John Coltrane
#14. I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.
John Coltrane
#15. The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.
John Coltrane
#16. When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.
John Coltrane
#17. After all the investigation, all of the technique-doesn't matter! Only if the feeling is right.
John Coltrane
#18. The real risk is not
changing. I have to feel that I'm after something. If I make money, fine. But
I'd rather be striving. It's the striving, man, it's that I want.
John Coltrane
#19. I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing ... the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood.
John Coltrane
#20. I want to be a force for real good. In other words. I know that there are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.
John Coltrane
#21. Considering the great heritage in music that we have - the work of the giants of the past, the present, and the promise of those who are to come - I feel that we have every reason to face the future optimistically.
John Coltrane
#22. I believe that men are here to grow themselves into best good that they can be - at least, this is what I want to do.
John Coltrane
#23. Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
John Coltrane
#24. If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing.
John Coltrane
#25. I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.
John Coltrane
#26. We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive taste
John Coltrane
#27. I've always felt that even though a man was not a Christian, he still has to know the truth some way or another. Or if he was a Christian, he could know the truth. The truth itself doesn't have any name on it to me. And each man has to find this for himself, I think.
John Coltrane
#28. I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
John Coltrane
#29. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being ... When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups ... I want to speak to their souls.
John Coltrane
#30. Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.
John Coltrane
#31. Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.
John Coltrane
#35. Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
John Coltrane
#36. Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.
John Coltrane
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