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I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.
Thelonious Monk
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Thelonious Monk
Age: 64 †
Born: 1917
Born: October 10
Died: 1982
Died: February 17
Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pianist
Recording Artist
Rocky Mount
North Carolina
Thelonious Sphere Monk
Thelonious S. Monk
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Music
Monk
Definition
Definitions
Jazz
Supposed
More quotes by Thelonious Monk
Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy
Thelonious Monk
I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.
Thelonious Monk
If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
Thelonious Monk
A genius is the one most like himself.
Thelonious Monk
Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.
Thelonious Monk
We have two kids, my wife and myself.
Thelonious Monk
I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day.
Thelonious Monk
I'd go stupid collecting and counting my money.
Thelonious Monk
Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.
Thelonious Monk
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
Thelonious Monk
I never though much about race.
Thelonious Monk
Miles'd got killed if he hit me.
Thelonious Monk
The piano ain't got no wrong notes.
Thelonious Monk
I have to listen to New York I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.
Thelonious Monk
I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.
Thelonious Monk
Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.
Thelonious Monk
It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.
Thelonious Monk
When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up.
Thelonious Monk
Don't play everything (or every time) let some things go by... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.
Thelonious Monk
Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.
Thelonious Monk
