Quote

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

John Coltrane

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Coltrane
Age: 40 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 23
Died: 1967
Died: July 17
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Musician
Saxophonist
Hamlet
North Carolina
Trane
John William Coltrane
St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane
Never
Walk
Time
Walks
Heard
Wish
Music
Firsts
First
Sometimes
Jazz

More quotes by John Coltrane

Image
I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.
John Coltrane
Image
I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
John Coltrane
Image
Change is inevitable in music - things change.
John Coltrane
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right.
John Coltrane
Image
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
John Coltrane
Image
Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.
John Coltrane
Image
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
Image
Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.
John Coltrane
Image
I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. You know, I know that there are forces out here 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
Image
Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.
John Coltrane
Image
I'm into scales right now.
John Coltrane
Image
I've always felt that even though a man was not a Christian, he still has to know the truth some way or another. Or if he was a Christian, he could know the truth. The truth itself doesn't have any name on it to me. And each man has to find this for himself, I think.
John Coltrane
Image
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
Image
The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
John Coltrane
Image
We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive taste
John Coltrane
Image
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
John Coltrane
Image
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