Ornette Coleman Quotes

Quotes about:

• It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

  Ornette Coleman

  Perseverance, Mistake, Jazz

  60 Copy quote

• Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Memorable, Night

  48 Copy quote

• Music has many uses and I think the most perfected use that music has is one of a healing quality.

  Ornette Coleman

  Healing, Thinking, Quality

  18 Copy quote

• I don't try to please when I play. I try to cure.

  Ornette Coleman

  Play, Trying, Cures

  "Ornette Coleman: What I've Learned" by Mark Warren, www.esquire.com. December 14, 2009.

  19 Copy quote

• Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.

  Ornette Coleman

  Firsts

  18 Copy quote

• The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Ideas, Style

  21 Copy quote

• Sound has no parents.

  Ornette Coleman

  Parent, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Jazz, Argument

  4 Copy quote

• For me, being an innovator doesn't mean being more intelligent, more rich, it's not a word, it's an action.

  Ornette Coleman

  Mean, Intelligent, Action

  24 Copy quote

• I wasn't so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That's why I'm broke.

  Ornette Coleman

  Jazz, Broke, Heard

  Esquire, January 2010.

  11 Copy quote

• Making music is like a form of religion for me, because it soothes your heart and increases the pleasure of your brain. Most of all, it's very enjoyable to express something that you can only hear and not see, which is not bad.

  Ornette Coleman

  Heart, Brain, Pleasure

  4 Copy quote

• We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we've forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We've separated music from life.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Class, Suffering

  17 Copy quote

• You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

  Ornette Coleman

  Color, Gdp, Titles

  Interview with Michael Jarrett, www2.york.psu.edu. November 8, 1987.

  16 Copy quote

• I'm interested in music, not in my image. If someone plays something fantastic, that I could never have thought of, it makes me happy to know it exists.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Play, Jazz

  4 Copy quote

• That's what I was trying to say when we were talking about sound. I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about.

  Ornette Coleman

  Thinking, Talking, Play

  16 Copy quote

• I have often read critical pieces where the critic said that what the composer was trying to do didn't come off. I have wondered what the critic meant if he didn't know what the composer was trying to do.

  Ornette Coleman

  Trying, Pieces, Said

  15 Copy quote

• The only thing my mother would say to me about my music - I'd say, "Mom, listen to this," and she'd say, "Junior, I know who you are."

  Ornette Coleman

  Mom, Mother, Juniors

  "Ornette Coleman: What I've Learned". Interview with Mark Warren, www.esquire.com. December 14, 2009.

  11 Copy quote

• You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

  Ornette Coleman

  Two, Numbers, Worry

  Interview with Michael Jarrett, www2.york.psu.edu. November 8, 1987.

  21 Copy quote

• Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.

  Ornette Coleman

  Doe, Individual

  4 Copy quote

• I think that those elements - light and sound - are beyond democratic. They're into the creative part of life.

  Ornette Coleman

  Thinking, Light, Creative

  11 Copy quote

• I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, 'Well if you go out and save your money.' So I went and got - I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I'd bring whatever I made.

  Ornette Coleman

  Mother, Shoes, Shining

  7 Copy quote

• I'm having this conversation with you now. I'm talking, but I'm thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I'm concentrating on what you're saying. So that means there's more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person's got you doing.

  Ornette Coleman

  Moving On, Mean, Thinking

  Interview with Michael Jarrett, www2.york.psu.edu. November 8, 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• It seems the activity of expressing sound to do with music has just started blooming - and because of that, the beginners feel like they're professionals, and the professionals feel like they are beginners, which is very healthy.

  Ornette Coleman

  Healthy, Sound, Beginners

  7 Copy quote

• No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying.

  Ornette Coleman

  Kids, Thinking, Adults

  Interview with Michael Jarrett, www2.york.psu.edu. November 8, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

• I don't really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I'd like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

  Ornette Coleman

  Thinking, Musician, Kind

  4 Copy quote

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