Ornette Coleman

I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.

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.

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

I find my inspiration in myself.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

I sing like I feel.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

I wasn’t so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That’s why I’m broke.