Ornette Coleman

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

I have no one style.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.