Creativity Quote by Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor is talking like someone who spent a lifetime being told to “just play” while he was busy building an entire philosophy out of sound. “The quality of life” lands first as a blunt moral standard, not a lifestyle slogan. For Taylor, life quality isn’t comfort; it’s rigor. It’s whether you’re living in a way that can sustain real work, real attention, real risk. Then he swerves into his signature cadence: “values that go down to doin’ that.” The phrasing matters. “Go down” suggests fundamentals, roots, bedrock commitments you can’t fake when the music gets hard. He’s pointing past opinions and taste toward the ethics of practice: discipline, refusal, stamina, and the willingness to be misunderstood.

The line also carries a quiet jab at the machinery around jazz - presenters, labels, critics - that often tried to separate art from the conditions of making it. Taylor’s career was a long argument that avant-garde music wasn’t an aesthetic garnish; it was a way of living that required time, money, space, and respect. When he says “that’s the issue,” he’s stripping away the romantic mythology of the “genius” and naming the real conflict: not whether the music is “accessible,” but whether a society will support the kind of life that produces uncompromising art.

It’s a musician’s answer to a political question, delivered in the language of process: show me your values, and I’ll show you what you can actually do.