Top 100 Coltrane's Quotes
#1. In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.
Cecil Taylor
#2. Coltrane's labyrinthine solo plays on in my ears, never ending.
Haruki Murakami
#3. I try whistling to fill in the silence. The soprano sax from Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," though of course my dubious whistling doesn't come anywhere near the complex, lightning-quick original. I just add bits so what I hear in my head approximates the sound. Better than nothing, I figure.
Haruki Murakami
#4. A Love Supreme' is Coltrane's best-known and best-selling album.
Lewis Porter
#5. For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
Cornel West
#6. Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.
Lee Konitz
#7. An original first pressing of Coltrane's Giant Steps,
A.E. Via
#8. After all the investigation, all of the technique-doesn't matter! Only if the feeling is right.
John Coltrane
#9. I was very angsty from a very young age. The way people start acting when they're 15, I started being at 8.
Ellar Coltrane
#10. When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick.
Patrick DeWitt
#11. I love films where the world seems to be going a bit faster and everything's a bit brighter and more in focus.
Robbie Coltrane
#12. My mom comes from a really out-there upbringing, so for her, the way she raised me is pretty disciplined. I was home-schooled but more really unschooled, really.
Ellar Coltrane
#13. 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
#14. I didn't have my parents to rebel against, but I had society, and that definitely is what they taught me. Just: Trust nothing.
Ellar Coltrane
#15. When Coltrane died, a void appeared in this music that has not been filled yet. He maintained a forward motion in his work and did not look back.
Bill Dixon
#16. John Coltrane was an addict; Billie Holiday was an addict; Eugene O'Neill was an addict. What would America be without addicts and post-addicts who make such grand contributions to our society?
Cornel West
#17. I'm not interested in being famous or anything, but I'm definitely interested in expressing emotions, and acting and filmmaking can be great outlets for that. Filmmaking is an incredible art.
Ellar Coltrane
#18. 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
#19. One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.
John Coltrane
#20. 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
#21. Who ... what are they?"
"My pride and glory," Alex said fondly. "Betty and Lucy Coltrane. Best damned bouncers in the business. Though of course I'd never tell them that. Fiercer than pit bulls and cheaper to run. Married to each other. They had a dog once, but they ate it.
Simon R. Green
#22. What you do is get the right director and the right screenwriter and the right cast. It's a fantastic job.
Robbie Coltrane
#23. Believe me, my children have more stamina than a power station.
Robbie Coltrane
#24. I never watched a frame of the film until it was finished.
Ellar Coltrane
#25. Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
Miles Davis
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move.
Robbie Coltrane
#29. Now listen for your song. Everybody's got a song. When I used to chase the Trane - John Coltrane that is - he used to tell me, 'If I know a man's sound, I know the man.' Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat?
David Mutti Clark
#30. [John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play.
Pharoah Sanders
#31. A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good.
Tad Williams
#32. It's beautiful to have people look me in the eyes and actually treat me like a human.
Ellar Coltrane
#33. In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.
Archie Shepp
#34. It was quite instant that he wanted Harry's approval. Did you notice that? And the children sort of rescued him this time. It's a great turnabout. That's what happens as your children get older. They do things for you, and it's quite shocking when they do.
Robbie Coltrane
#35. It's hell with that big beard and stuff. That's the one bit I don't like. Either you take out at lunch or you don't eat. So I opted not to eat, 'cause having to put it on twice is horrific.
Robbie Coltrane
#36. When you are new to the business, you think if you give a really bad performance, that's one they will print. You will be judged. You just have to be brave.
Robbie Coltrane
#37. I feel like that's so ingrained in so many children that you are so confined and repressed growing up that, anything you do, you have to rebel against it at some point.
Ellar Coltrane
#38. When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.
Robert Glasper
#40. 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
#41. If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.
Elvin Jones
#42. I've signed on for four movies, and I'll do four. That's easy. No complications there.
Robbie Coltrane
#43. I think John Coltrane is one of the great American heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.
Simon Van Booy
#44. The person who comes up to you and makes the most noise and is the most intrusive is invariably the person in the room who has no respect for you at all, and it's really all about them.
Robbie Coltrane
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. It was exciting just to stand in front of the hallowed ground of Birdland that had been blessed by John Coltrane, or the Five Spot on St. Mark's Place where Billie Holiday used to sing, where Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman opened the field of jazz like human can openers.
Patti Smith
#48. 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
#49. I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.
Cornel West
#50. I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It'd be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of 'Glee.' I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.
Mark Salling
#51. I just get the same stuff as I did before, but the price tag is much higher.
Robbie Coltrane
#52. 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
#53. I sometimes worry that all the beautiful things have been made.
Robbie Coltrane
#55. I was a pretty alert kid, and I, you know, I was very interested in arts.
Ellar Coltrane
#56. I took LSD and listened to Coltrane a lot; a lot of people did.
Sam Andrew
#57. I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Wynton Marsalis
#58. My aunt was a fashion model and I happened to go to her agency with her, one day, when I was five. A talent agent said, "You should come talk to us." I did a few things. I did an indie movie and commercials, and stuff.
Ellar Coltrane
#59. I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.
John Coltrane
#60. Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.
Colin Greenwood
#61. I think the shocking thing to discover is the owls are not stupid and very feral, very hard to train.
Robbie Coltrane
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.
Miller Williams
#65. I've struggled so much, growing up, with just feeling that my life is valid because it's not filled with these hyper-dramatic moments, and I think a lot of people of my generation feel that way. We're so inundated with hyper-drama that people crave everyday life.
Ellar Coltrane
#66. Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that ...
Carlos Santana
#67. I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters.
Paul Bley
#68. Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.
Talib Kweli
#69. Does one ever play Coltrane for the uninitiated without subconsciously hoping for the worst?
Ken Kesey
#70. See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work.
Robbie Coltrane
#71. Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious.
John Coltrane
#72. I wasn't a child star, so hopefully I can keep my head on straight.
Ellar Coltrane
#73. The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.
Ellar Coltrane
#74. Everyone knows marriage is hard work. So if you've chosen the shackles, quit whining and get on with it.
Karina Bliss
#75. The backgrounds in Lord of the Rings are all explained.
Robbie Coltrane
#76. God breathes through us so completely ... So gently we hardly feel it ... yet it is our everything.
John Coltrane
#77. Change is inevitable in music - things change.
John Coltrane
#79. Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft
John Coltrane
#80. I think a lot of people were like, "Oh, you're 13, you're gonna rebel." But I was never in public school and I was never really forced to do much of anything, as a kid.
Ellar Coltrane
#81. The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
John Coltrane
#82. I've got two young kids. I don't know what the future holds.
Robbie Coltrane
#83. I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.
Eric Clapton
#84. I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit.
Wayne Coyne
#85. Why is it trivia? People call it trivia because they know nothing and they are embarrassed about it.
Robbie Coltrane
#86. I had a very bad time with acid. I did that classic thing of looking in the mirror by mistake and seeing the devil. But I took it several times, because you always think that next time you might have the wonderful time that everyone else is having.
Robbie Coltrane
#87. 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
#88. Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's (Coltrane) to speak in Turkish.
Daniel Radcliffe
#89. 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
#90. Ninety percent of people's nightmares is standing in front of 1,000 people. Did you know that? And having to speak. You would have thought it would have been a madman tying you up and taking your eyes out.
Robbie Coltrane
#91. To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.
Elvin Jones
#92. My dad? He died when I was 19, which is a bad time for your dad to die, because there's an awful lot of things you have to resolve with your parents past your teens if you've been a difficult teenager.
Robbie Coltrane
#93. With you in my hand I can travel across the universe in one verse and skip moons to the tunes of Miles or Coltrane.
Brandi L. Bates
#94. John Coltrane - I've been listening to the 'Trane again. It blows you away, because I know more now and I hear more now and I had a life that I've lived!
Alan Vega
#95. I mean, I'm obviously not one of those people who's so beautiful women take their clothes off when I walk into the room. I didn't become a star overnight.
Robbie Coltrane
#97. I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know ... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.
Kim Gordon
#98. When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.
Wynton Marsalis
#99. Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.
Alex Clare
#100. I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it
John Coltrane
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