Miles Davis Quotes

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I can say this much with confidence - that I now have a sound of my own

I've learnt that I've had the best results from just trying to be me, trying to make a movie or TV show I want to see or write a script I want to read, and that's really all I can offer - being authentic.

I'd hate it if everyone in the world liked me, my music and what I wore. It'd make it boring, and I wouldn't have anything to work towards. It's not to everyone's taste, but I can only be me.

The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

To me, searching for perfection isn't anywhere near as interesting as trying to find your own voice.

If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it's being true to their nature... that's what takes a long time to learn.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

I think you can study too much. I've seen that happen. Young people get immersed in the work of other directors and end up imitating them rather than finding their own identity.

I look to many different women for inspiration but try to make things my own.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

If you spend your life walking through somebody else's museum, you never find out whether you're Rembrandt or not.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

Lifestyle is the art of discovering ways to live uniquely.

I think the beauty of the film industry is that if another person tries to become another person or act like another person or imitate another person, they don't really get too far. When that person starts to realize who they are and what they can bring to the table, they start to blossom and grow. With that, it's not so much me looking towards my predecessors who have paved the way in the industry - it's more getting inspired. I get little bits and pieces of what I can take from any and everybody.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

I'm not very good at sounding like other people. When you're going through your 20's and trying to get a break and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something that sounds like film music, your idea of what it would be, it never really worked out for me and it's only really when I learned to trust the fact that I could only really sound like me.

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

Everybody is different. Everybody has different styles. Just do it the best way you know how.

It's great to get to make something in your own voice.