Ornette Coleman

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.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

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.

Music is a verb.

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

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

I play whatever the hell comes out… that’s it.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

I could see the blues was about survival.

In order to complete your cycle, a musician needs to write; document what is going through your mind and where you are harmonically, theoretically, historically.

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.

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

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

People couldn’t give an F about how many cars you got any more. It’s about the way the music sounds, where you’re going, the experience you’re going to hanging out with your friends, the type clothes that you’re wearing – all of that’s art.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.