Ornette Coleman

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

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

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’ve had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I’ve had lots of guys call me up. I’ve gotten two or three commissions to write things. I’ve written lots of movie scores.

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?

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

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

You have a mentor or teacher and you learn all he can show you.

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

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

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

My version of Georgia became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.