Ornette Coleman

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.

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.

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

Dog spelled backward is God. That’s pretty heavy.

I don’t know what they’re thinking about. Just because someone says, ‘I like what you do’ or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I’ve had that experience with record companies.

To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it’s about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you’ll never do it this way twice. I’ve studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

Don’t bullshit, just play.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

I can’t sing it straight. I have no choice but to swing it.