In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.

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.

Be as peaceful as a dancing spring flower.

Best friends are literal and figurative life savers that we should thank as often as possible for rescuing us from ourselves.

It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.

Our fascination with weather: its caprices and changes as an antidote to the eternal repetition of daily life; a helpful illusion of novelty

We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect.

Don't say, "If I could, I would." Say, "If I can, I will."

Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.

Yesterday's success belongs to yesterday.

I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable. I just wasn't clever enough to actually enjoy it.