Chet Baker Quotes

Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

I love jazz because it's so American; you know it's our Only Original Art Form. It just goes against the greed of corporate America and the Wall Street Banks that are destroying our economy.

As a solo artist, my desire is to express myself through my music.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

I'm probably more personal when I'm acting than at any other time. More open, more direct. Because it allows me to be something that I can't always feel comfortable with when I'm living my own life, you know? Because it's make-believe.

Music comes from the soul. It's a way to express yourself, so we always, always need to save the music.

When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

I started writting songs when I was really little because there were things I could say through songs that I couldn't verbalize any other way. Writting was something I had to do.

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this."

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I'll give it to them.

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.

It's nice to have a little bit of art to fall back on.

I always wanted to have a fragrance, and I always wanted to be able to connect with people in ways other than through film.

The melody is French. But that's the end of the record. I named it "Jean Pierre Then There Were None," you know, because of the big explosion. You'll like it. It's a nice album.

Your work is your own private megaphone to tell the world what you believe.

I've always been an all around creative person. Song writing and writing are great ways for me to express myself.

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

I thank God for Hip Hop because Marvin Gaye didn't have that and he was able to be that dope. For us to have that and more, I feel like it is up to us to be as dope as we can possibly be.

I'm not videotaping my life, but in a way I am trying to put certain things about myself on canvas.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.

Fashion has a reason to be, because in fashion you can find new kinds of expression about human beings. It's my way to communicate.

I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.

The musings are the same I believe the fire to create burns so heavily that I am never far from a guitar or a fountain pen.