Cecil Taylor Quotes

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I have no preconceived ideas; I gave that up a long time ago… The only thing we can do as musicians is make an album we like, and an album that we consider to be incredibly good.

Who cares about my opinions?

I've never recorded anything I didn't like.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?

I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself the way, if I saw the movie in a theater, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No.

What people think of me and my playing is up to them, not me.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I don't have to save rock. I don't even like rock that much.

I realize that I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea, and that's okay. I think that's the point of music.

Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.

I don't like rock. Honestly, I like to listen to it, but it's not for me. There's a lot of musical genres that I find interesting, but they don't suit me. It's one thing to listen to different genres, but to perform a genre that isn't yours is counterproductive.

Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own.

I make the kind of music I like.

The greatest thing about music is everyone has their own style, and I respect all styles of music.

If people would like to come to my concerts I'd love them to come. And if they like the music that I make, I love that too. But I do not make music for other people. I make it to please myself.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

I don't feel like I'm on a mission. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to.

I work in a medium where I get to be totally invisible and I get great pleasure from that, being a pretty self-conscious person.

Creating any type of art is all about mood. I've been making extreme music in one fashion or another for decades. And truthfully, Down has a big enough fan base to where I could remain content to do only that, but music is a vast territory and I am an explorer. And I'm a lover of all things considered extreme in music.

That's what I've tried to do: I've tried to make music that I really love.

I don't particularly fall in love with my own compositions, but some of them are decent.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.