Ornette Coleman

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

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

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.

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

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.

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

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

The whole concept for the Yeezus album is that we’re not going to be using CDs in the future and since this is the last time we’re going to see it, this is an open casket for the CD.

You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on.

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.