Alice Coltrane

I didn't want to be equal to him. I didn't have to be equal to him and do what he did. That, I never considered. I don't think like that. And whatever in the women's liberation - that's what they want. I didn't want to be equal to him. I wanted to be a wife.

When you quiet your mind, you can enter a world of clarity, peace and understanding.

When looking through the spiritual eye, or the third eye encased within the human mind, one can see vividly beyond the ken of human eyesight, beyond the material atom, and into the future, thereby transcending the limitations of time and space.

Maybe other musicians are interested in different things, maybe they have greater monetary concerns. I hear people who have not changed, who haven't elevated anything, who are the same as they were back in the '50s and '60s.

You have got to stress the freedom of music to really branch out and be universal.

Just as it is fire's nature to burn, it is meditation's nature to heal, to bring peace and uplift you beyond your worldly environment and transport you to a higher plane.

You're creating ' it comes from the heart, the spirit, the soul. You're not manufacturing somebody else's plan, somebody else's blueprint, somebody else's idea that's not yours. So when you're creating, that's the beauty side of art, you know? It comes from within you.

The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within.

I believe that meditation is the highest spiritual practice, the pathway to God.

Look at what trance means. It means to transcend... it means to become transcendental! So if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness, of revelation, of spirituality, of spiritual power.

I came through the bebop era, and to me that was enough.

I didn't have to inspire John toward the avant-garde; he did not need anything from me. That is why it's so interesting that critics decided to dislike me. At some point the members of the quartet felt it was time for a change, and left on their own.