Davis Quotes

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.

I grew up on Bette Davis movies, and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

In the movies, Bette Davis lights two cigarettes and hands the second one to James Cagney. It was just so glamorous and romantic.

There is only one governor, and his name is Gray Davis.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.

I don't want to be famous. I want to be secure. I don't want the world. I just want a piece of it. I want people to remember Eric Davis.

And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City.

Sammy Davis, I backed him up. I used to study him every night. I saw how great performers worked and was able to incorporate a little bit from the best.

My favorite actress of all times is Bette Davis in Dark Victory. I have seen it six or seven times, and I still cry.

I got to play in a crowd, play in Wimbledon finals, be the guy on a Davis Cup team for a while. Those are opportunities not a lot of people get.

Miles Davis had me play and he hired me the following week and after that, everything broke wide open.

In 1978, the tradition of running from village to village with a message was revived. that first run was from Davis to Los Angeles, a distance of 500 miles.

I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I've seen almost every one of her films, and she's been very inspiring to me.

I think there's no reason the Davis Cup couldn't be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.

I've been close to Bette Davis for thirty-eight years - and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.

I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism.

I used to be friends with Miles Davis. He didn't like many folks. I lived across the street from him.

I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time.

We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.

We're definitely a hodgepodge of influences. Mine, most heavily, would be Southern rock - the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and stuff like that. Hillary is more from the country side - her mom is Linda Davis, a country singer. Dave, he's a big fan of the Eagles and like that.

If Miles Davis hadn't died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn't much else that would have got me into the studio... although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

Stuart Davis has more to do with what the United States is like than Hopper.

I don't think I have the image that say, Judy Garland has, or Bette Davis.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn't get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one.