«Here is Miles Davis’s less familiar voice, his speaking voice. He gave interviews too seldom in the first thirty years of his public life and way too often in the last ten. Early or late, he started out suspicious but if he reckoned the interviewer was on his side, he never left him without a gem of some kind-salty, snide, or sage. Maher and Dorr gather together Davis’s greatest hits in Q & A, and they make compelling reading.» -Jack Chambers, author of Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis

MILES ON MILES:

«What do I think of my own playing? I don’t keep any of my records. I can’t stand to hear them after I’ve made them.»

«Only thing that makes me feel bad is to know I can’t live to be 172.»

«It knocks me out to be me. It really kills me.»

«Making fun of white folks on television. That’s my main hobby.»

«Hell, if you understood everything I said, you’d be me.»

«The white man leaning back smoking his cigar, he’s not going to move. He wants everything just the same. He won’t do anything he isn’t forced to. That’s what makes our music different. It comes from a people who have had to learn how to make the white man move.»

«My ego only needs a good rhythm section.»