Keith Jarrett

We accept so many things that come through the media; we get used to them, however vigilant we are. But for any creative art, you have to remain 110% conscious, and in a world that's losing consciousness, that's getting harder.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

I'm my own most merciless critic onstage.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

I am a romantic, I admit it.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

You know, when people look at a tree, they look at the leaves; they don't look at the spaces between the leaves. They're focused on the tree. I think there's an awareness of spaces or it wouldn't look like a tree to them.

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

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

When you're up against an electric band like that, it's like you're on two separate planets.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I'm not talking ideas, or even presentation. It's like in politics: You have to sell something to become an electric player - like your skin or your heart.

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage.

I actually get a metallic taste in my mouth when I think about electric music.

I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

I don't like recording studios - except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.