If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.

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.

Anything that feels good couldn't possibly be bad.

On the still calm waters of surrender, the reflections of clarity appear.

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

Worry is assuming responsibilities that you cannot handle. They truth is, they are responsibilities that God never intended for you to handle, because they are His.

Without looking through the window, you can see Heaven's Way.

Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is - and not so much a matter of being real.

The heaviest of my crosses was that I could do nothing to lighten the cross my mother was suffering.

In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself," I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.

I don't like people who get into fights about football - or anything else.

come he slow or come he fast it is but death that comes at last