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Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
John Coltrane
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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
Think
Glass
Thinking
Glasses
Jazz
Wrong
Making
Ends
Music
Sometimes
Magnifying
More quotes by John Coltrane
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
Change is inevitable in music - things change.
John Coltrane
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
God breathes through us so completely...So gently we hardly feel it...yet it is our everything.
John Coltrane
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
All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right.
John Coltrane
Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe. . . Thats what I would like to do. I think thats one of the greatest things you can do in life and we all try to do it in some way. The musicians is through his music.
John Coltrane
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
...That is one of the main causes of this arrogance: the idea of power. Then you lose your true power which is to be part of all, and the only way you can be part of all is to understand it. And when you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and say, 'I know what you're going to teach me'.
John Coltrane
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
Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.
John Coltrane
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
John Coltrane
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
All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.
John Coltrane
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
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.
John Coltrane
The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
John Coltrane
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
Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
John Coltrane
Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.
John Coltrane
