Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?

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.

In today's life, Luxury is Time and Space.

I tried talking to Jesus, but he just put me on hold...

Jesus’ command to love our neighbours is a command to love all strangers precisely because we too have been strangers to God and welcomed in.

Never place yourself above your fellow man, for we are all, each and every one of us, born of equal rights to the nourishing earth beneath and the wonder of the stars above.

Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.

Pressure bursts pipes. I thank God for giving me peace of mind to overcome pressure. The difference between winning and losing is when pressure hits.

Of offering more than what I can deliver, I have a bad habit, it is true. But I have to offer more than I can deliver, To be able to deliver what I do.

If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the Granth Sahib or the Koran?

Marriage, the family unit, was the "original Department of Health, Education and Welfare."

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.