Thelonious Monk was a jazz pianist and composer.

Attributed

Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band.

MONK: "Why did we stop?"

THE TECHNICIAN: "I thought you were rehearsing."

MONK: "Aren't we always?"

Source: Thelonious Monk Documentary DVD.

• "I made the wrong mistakes"
  • (After a disappointing improvisation)

• You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?

• “Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy” (Source: www.thinkexist.com)

• "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." (Source: www.reflectionfortheday.com)

• "Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture" - variously attributed

• "Butterflies faster than birds? Must be, 'cause with all the birds on the scene up in my neighborhood, there's this butterfly, and he flies any way he wanna." (Source: Time Magazine)

John Coltrane

• "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all."
• "Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft"
  • John Coltrane, Downbeat (1960). http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=stories&subsect=story_detail&sid=353