Ornette Coleman

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

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.

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

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

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

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

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

Music is interior decoration.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

When there was vinyl, I just loved opening a record and smelling that wonderful smell.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

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

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.