Paul Bley Quotes

#1. I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.

Paul Bley

#2. My family barbecued a lot; good barbecue is more complicated than you think.

Manish Dayal

#3. I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek oneself in other people, in characters.

John Cazale

#4. A voracious gambler does not gamble until he wins, but until he loses everything, and a smart one knows when to quit.

M. T. Panchal

#5. When I arrived in New York I was definitely the worst player in town! It was just a measure of how far I had to go. It took years, while I was at Juilliard I worked different weekends with different people.

Paul Bley

#6. There was one reviewer from the 'New York Times,' I forget his name, who said I was 'death warmed over.' I wrote him back that I knew more about death than he did. The 'Times' fired him, put him in the cooking department!

James Rosenquist

#7. I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician.

Paul Bley

#8. Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

Miguel De Cervantes

#9. The Will to Death is what keeps me alive

John Frusciante

#10. The real platform for religion is based on the concepts of compassion, respect and consideration, not just for human beings, but for all forms of life.

Paul Irwin

#11. Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.

Paul Bley

#12. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs

Arthur Conan Doyle

#13. If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.

Gary Hamel

#14. Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

Paul Bley

#15. God is higher than all wealth and success

Sunday Adelaja

#16. Again Mariner and Butcher are trying to work the oracle on the near post

Martin Tyler

#17. 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

#18. Happy people live. Unhappy people tell others how to live.

Marty Rubin

#19. We are a country with great potential. We have the political will to make deep changes in a just and equitable way, to put our country back on a development path, to meet the challenges of a new world.

George Papandreou

#20. Every proper exertion has been made and will be continued to carry out the wishes of Congress in relation to the tobacco trade, as indicated in the several resolutions of the House of Representatives and the legislation of the two branches.

Martin Van Buren