Charles Mingus Music Quotations

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

I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

My music is evidence of my souls will to live.

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

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.

Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

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