Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
Thelonious MonkI don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
Thelonious MonkAt this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.
Thelonious MonkJazz 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 MonkI don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.
Thelonious MonkI don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can't develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don't have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.
Thelonious MonkI was playing birthday parties. House-rent parties where they used to sell whisky during prohibition.
Thelonious MonkWhen 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 MonkIf you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.
Thelonious MonkA note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
Thelonious MonkDon'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 MonkI 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 MonkIt 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!
Thelonious Monk