Quote

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

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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
Everything
Play
Important
Every
Things
Time

More quotes by Thelonious Monk

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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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Jazz is my adventure.
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I have to listen to New York I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.
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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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Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy
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It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.
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I made the wrong mistakes
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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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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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I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day.
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If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
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The piano ain't got no wrong notes.
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I never though much about race.
Thelonious Monk
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Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.
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We have two kids, my wife and myself.
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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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I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.
Thelonious Monk
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Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.
Thelonious Monk