I've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you - the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.

I am Charles Mingus, half black man, not even white enough to pass for nothing but black. I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazzman, but not famed enough to make a living in this society.

I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

My music is evidence of my souls will to live.

If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Making the complicated simple is true creativity.

Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon.

Turns out I’m not so easily broken.

It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.

I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

If you're too dangerous to fly, you're too dangerous to buy a gun.

Most mystics do not want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it. A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake.

It's about thinking that being blonde and slim and perfect will automatically bring you happiness, and then discovering that life is full of as many disappointments as there were before.

You can't pick when you're touched. You can't pick the time. It just is. It's the reality. What it is, is. I can't change the past. I can only deal with the present and the future.

The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.