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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
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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
Years
Picks
Way
Jazz
Public
Doe
Monk
Music
Fifteen
Play
Twenty
Take
Twenties
Even
Pick
More quotes by Thelonious Monk
If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
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I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.
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Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.
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The majority of juice-heads and winos and junkies arent musicians.
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I was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.
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Jazz is my adventure.
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I'd go stupid collecting and counting my money.
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Miles'd got killed if he hit me.
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I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day.
Thelonious Monk
It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!
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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.
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It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.
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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.
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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.
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A genius is the one most like himself.
Thelonious Monk
We have two kids, my wife and myself.
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I never though much about race.
Thelonious Monk
I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.
Thelonious Monk
I made the wrong mistakes
Thelonious Monk
I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.
Thelonious Monk