Thelonious Monk Quotes & Sayings

#1. Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.

Thelonious Monk

#2. The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

Thelonious Monk

#3. A genius is the one most like himself.

Thelonious Monk

#4. Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.

Thelonious Monk

#5. All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

Thelonious Monk

#6. Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

Thelonious Monk

#7. There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.

Thelonious Monk

#8. It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

Thelonious Monk

#9. Everyone is a genius at being themselves

Thelonious Monk

#10. We have two kids, my wife and myself.

Thelonious Monk

#11. The majority of juice-heads and winos and junkies arent musicians.

Thelonious Monk

#12. I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.

Thelonious Monk

#13. The inside of the tune [the bridge] is the part that makes the outside sound good.

Thelonious Monk

#14. Monk's reasons for dancing during a performance: "I get tired sitting down at the piano! That way I can dig the rhythm better.

Thelonious Monk

#15. You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

Thelonious Monk

#16. Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by ... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

Thelonious Monk

#17. Where's jazz going? I don't know. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Thelonious Monk

#18. The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances.

Thelonious Monk

#19. They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

Thelonious Monk

#20. Miles'd got killed if he hit me.

Thelonious Monk

#21. I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

Thelonious Monk

#22. Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

Thelonious Monk

#23. Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

Thelonious Monk

#24. I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

Thelonious Monk

#25. Jazz is my adventure.

Thelonious Monk

#26. I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.

Thelonious Monk

#27. All musicians are potential band leaders.

Thelonious Monk

#28. Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

Thelonious Monk

#29. Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

Thelonious Monk

#30. I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day ...

Thelonious Monk

#31. I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.

Thelonious Monk

#32. Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Thelonious Monk

#33. I never though much about race.

Thelonious Monk

#34. If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Thelonious Monk

#35. I'm famous. Ain't that a bitch?

Thelonious Monk

#36. I don't know what other people are doing - I just know about me.

Thelonious Monk

#37. I find my inspiration in myself.

Thelonious Monk

#38. I always believed in being myself.

Thelonious Monk

#39. Be-bop wasn't developed in any deliberate way.

Thelonious Monk

#40. I guess, you know, if I didn't make it with the piano, I guess I would've been the biggest bum.

Thelonious Monk

#41. It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!

Thelonious Monk

#42. I played the wrong wrong notes.

Thelonious Monk

#43. When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up.

Thelonious Monk