Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.

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.

Bureaucracy: A contentious rumble toward the establishment of authoritarian rule.

All that glitters is not hovery.

Lovely chatting with you, darling, but I've got to run. Face it, you're always more content when you're chasing me than when you have me locked up. I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

Names are hard. I have a library of What to Name Your Baby books, and I’m always picking up new books, and books of baby names from other countries. I like cool-sounding names.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

By the grace of AEC, BNL, God, Green and Hayworth (alphabetical order), we should see neutrinos.

I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!

I have cotton or flannel sheets, depending on the weather. They have to be ironed, and I get my bed changed nearly every day.