Ornette Coleman Quotes

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

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

When I have them working together, it's like a beautiful kaleidoscope.

For me, being an innovator doesn't mean being more intelligent, more rich, it's not a word, it's an action.

The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

Music has many uses and I think the most perfected use that music has is one of a healing quality.

Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.

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

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we've forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We've separated music from life.

It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

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.

The only thing my mother would say to me about my music - I'd say, "Mom, listen to this," and she'd say, "Junior, I know who you are."

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

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

All the things that human beings suffer from are how their environment treats them, and how the elements of their planet affects their mind and body--like radiation, cancer, and all.

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.

Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.

I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.

If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it's information. It's getting the right, good information.

That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.

Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.

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

Jerry Garcia was one of the original American icons. He played naturally and beautifully.

I don't really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I'd like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say.

I'm interested in music, not in my image. If someone plays something fantastic, that I could never have thought of, it makes me happy to know it exists.

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

Sound has no parents.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something