Ornette Coleman

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

Talk of God is most often in church. Is there a God outside of church? I hope so. But how should I know? How does anybody know?

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

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

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

Jazz music is the real deal.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I try to practice with my life.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough!

People who are meant to be drawn to your music will find you.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.