Ornette Coleman

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

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

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.

Difference between sex and love? Well, you’re not always sure you’re in love. But when you’re having sex, there’s really no mistaking it.

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 think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.

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

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.