Pat Metheny Quotes

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

I don't control it at all. It's all up to the musicians in the group. They control it. They make all the cues, and they tell me what they want, and then I act like a mirroring device so that everyone can see what the cues are.

Understanding listening is an epiphany moment for every improviser. At least for me it was.

What I hear all the time is to stop and listen. When you do a scene 30 times, and know the lines, you stop listening. The point is to listen, that's the only thing that can make it real.

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

I pride myself in listening. When you have people paying attention to you, your biggest job is to listen what they want. Deliver what your community wants.

It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.

Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

Acting is about listening, and that's something that took me awhile. You almost don't have to learn your lines, if you listen to what they're saying and move it along.

People don't listen, they just wait for their turn to talk.

When you listen with perfect awareness, then listening becomes possible.

"You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen - not just money, but respect.

I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.

There is a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking.

A good radio show will captivate you, and it's active listening. It's not in the background.

To become a master communicator: shut your mouth & listen first.

I’ve learnt to listen. I don’t think I always did listen. Not just in plays, but in life. And you have to hear what people are saying before you can respond.

Listening is not a skill; it is a discipline.

And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good

When people realize they are being listened to, they tell you things.

Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.

Scripture often reminds us that it's not enough to have ears - we must use them.