Paul Desmond Quotes

#1. Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

Paul Desmond

#2. As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

Boz Scaggs

#3. I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

Paul Desmond

#4. We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

Paul Desmond

#5. The qualities in music which I considered most important - and still do - were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.

Paul Desmond

#6. Paul Desmond sounds like a female alcoholic.

Eddie Condon

#7. It was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo,

Paul Desmond

#8. Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.

Paul Desmond

#9. I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

Paul Desmond

#10. THERE must be in life something like a catastrophic turning point, when the world as we know it ceases to exist.

Jan-Philipp Sendker

#11. Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze.

Paul Desmond

#12. I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

Paul Desmond

#13. Captain, I said, letting the surprise I felt filter into my voice. It was weird how every time I said the word captain, I wanted to tack on a Jack Sparrow at the end.

Darynda Jones

#14. I don't always feel comfortable being outwardly aggressive.

Jenny Slate

#15. I was listening to this record by Paul Desmond called First Place Again. It's incredibly gorgeous. There is nothing better that you would want to get from music than you get from that record.

Sam Amidon

#16. I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.

Paul Desmond

#17. Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above.

Paul Desmond

#18. Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

Paul Desmond

#19. I was overlooked long before anyone knew who I was.

Paul Desmond

#20. We used to get on planes, and they'd ask who we were, and we'd say, 'The Dave Brubeck Quartet', and they'd say, 'Who?' In later years they'd say, 'Oh', which amounts to the same thing.

Paul Desmond

#21. I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.

Paul Desmond

#22. I couldn't fail. That wasn't allowed.

C.D. Reiss

#23. I would also like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

Paul Desmond

#24. I don't know how many calories an average chess player burns per game, but it often exceeds that of a player in ball games. It is not only the chess as such: You need to be fit and undergo complicated preparation.

Viswanathan Anand

#25. I'm very crafty! One time I made a television set out of a cardboard box - Everybody thought it was a lark! This was the beginning of a love affair with the arts.

Emma Watson