Elvin Jones Quotes

#1. Whenever Elvin Jones comes to Seattle I try to go catch him.

Matt Cameron

#2. After the way you accepted the mission, I know I can't convince you otherwise. So, instead ... come back alive. We'll be here ... waiting for you to come back.

CLAMP

#3. He who would be useful, strong, and happy must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggarly, and impure streams of thought.

James Allen

#4. Music is a way of life, it's everything. I play drums and that's what I believe I was born to do.

Elvin Jones

#5. Mitt Romney said he's not concerned about the very poor. What he means is people making less than a million.

David Letterman

#6. 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

#7. That's what the drummer is supposed to do. Keep the time. If you can do something else besides that, fine. But the time is essential and non-negotiable.

Elvin Jones

#8. As for men, those myriad little detached ponds with their own swarming corpuscular life, what were they but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers?

Loren Eiseley

#9. The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

Elvin Jones

#10. You cannot pluck love out of your heart as you would pull a tooth.

Honore De Balzac

#11. My doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

#12. Because everything is interdependent, there are no simple, single causes and effects. Every action creates not just an equal and opposite reaction, but a web of reverberating consequences.

Starhawk

#13. I feel very, very gratified when people are complimentary to what I have done or appreciated it with sincerity ... It makes me feel that maybe I did do something that was proper and that was right.

Elvin Jones

#14. I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

Elvin Jones

#15. We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn't always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.

Zoraida Cordova

#16. Tell me, is there someone in your life who's been sharing your life too closely? A friend or a loved one? Is there someone who's been taking up your time and not giving any of it back?

Alexandra Kleeman

#17. To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

Elvin Jones

#18. Zaira didn't know why men and women would need different cleansing supplies, but she used the female set because she liked the pale blue shade of it.

Nalini Singh

#19. I will one day accept death with gratitude if I meet it having lived a life that became truly my own.

Dan Pearce

#20. Minds are the real estate of the 21st century.

Chuck D

#21. You should get the feeling you should move. That's what is meant when people say the music moves me.

Elvin Jones

#22. It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful.

Elvin Jones

#23. I got claws and I am not afraid to use them...

Rachel Vincent

#24. Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, and do it fast.

Edward Noyes Westcott