Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.
There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war. As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets.
Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
Ever since I was a child I've always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there's always a melody in there.
I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy I am here to give voice to the invisible.
Every day you wake up is an opportunity to go beyond, and that 's why I let my band go right now. For the first time in my life I'm just roaming around, vagabonding.
I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.
If You're going to sweep the floor, sweep it better than anybody in town. And if You're going to play the guitar, really, really, really get in it, and don't be jivin'.
The best part of touring, still, is touching people's hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.
When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.
If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm.
I know I'm not the kind of person who's gonna wind up a walking jukebox, like many rock 'n' roll artists. They just play their hits and that's it. That doesn't appeal to me.
Bring the brothers home, and sisters home now. Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.
Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, 'Oh man, this is the stuff.' It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.
You cannot behave appropriately, unless you perceive correctly. Once you perceive you are a beam of Light, that comes from the mind of God, you will carry yourself differently.
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.
I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.
I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that's okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can't ever rest on your laurels.
I don’t eat meat because meat brings out negative qualities such as fear, anger, anxiety, aggressiveness, etc. Vegetables peacefully offer themselves to the earth when ripe, thus allowing a sublime and peaceful thought-conscio usness
When you fly to New York, sometimes they put you on hold and you just go round and around in a holding pattern. Sometimes in a concert, I feel other spirits in a holding pattern that they want to land through my heart and through my fingers.
There's a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
When you play from the heart, all of a sudden there's no gravity. You don't feel the weight of the world, of bills, of anything. That's why people love it. Your so-called insurmountable problems disappear, and instead of problems you get possibilities.
I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.
You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.
I realized that it's all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.
He just seems as cool as ever. I can smell him. Even on the other side, there is smell. Like, when babies are born, there's two smells-one is chicken soup, which is the flesh, and the other is lilacs, which is coming from the spiritual garden. The spirit has a lilac smell.
Angels cry because they want to experience what you and I feel: the moment. They live in eternity. They dont know what it is like to read a newspaper and get ink on your fingers. They dont know what it is like to take your shoes off and wiggle your toes under the dinner table.
I invite you, wholeheartedly, to read books that remind you of your highest self and emancipate you from mental slavery or false beliefs and illusions. The more you invest in attracting books that resonate with the frequency of your true self, the more light you will bring to the world.
My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.
We are capable of creating miracles ourselves and the greatest miracle is to create a masterpiece of joy out of your life with no excuses. The thing I focus on is going straight to heart. I go to mine first because if I don't feel it, you're not going to feel it. I take a deep breath and remind myself that before I give it to you I have to give it to myself.
The energy of devils and angels is the same energy; it's how you use it. It's fuel. There is a saying: If you scare all your devils away, the angels will go away with them. You know, the halo and the horns are the same thing. I mean it's OK to be spiritually horny - that's what creative genius is all about. Geniuses don't have time to think about how it's going to be received... they don't have time to think whether people like it or not, is it morally right, will God like it?
My reality is that God speaks to you every day. There's an inner voice, and when you hear it, you get a little tingle in your medulla oblongata at the back of your neck, a little shiver, and at two o'clock in the morning, everything's really quiet and you meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you've been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: Write this down. It is just an inner voice, and you trust it. That voice will never take you to the desert.
John Coltrane is still probably one of the greatest musicians of this century. His tone truly puts demons on a leash. His gift is directly from the mind of God and is very powerful. ..... The first time I heard a Love Supreme, it was really an assault. It could've been from mars as far as i was concerned, or another galaxy. I remember the album cover and the name, but the music didn't fit into the patterns of my brain at that point. It was like someone trying to tell a monkey about spirituality or computers, you know, it just didn't compute.