Ornette Coleman Quotes

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.' ~ Ornette Coleman

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

Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal. ~ Paul Bley

When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played. ~ Lou Reed

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

It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

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

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

I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play. ~ Lou Reed

I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me. ~ Ornette Coleman

That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

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

Musicians tell me, if what I'm doing is right, they should never have gone to school. ~ Ornette Coleman

The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman. ~ Pat Metheny

I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient. ~ Ornette Coleman

So, for instance, if you came to me, I'd ask, 'Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?' ~ Ornette Coleman

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business. ~ Ornette Coleman

Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything. ~ Ornette Coleman

I'd listened to [Ornette Coleman] all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby. ~ Roy Eldridge

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

Sound has no parents. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player. ~ Ornette Coleman

Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else. ~ Ornette Coleman

I would like to play for audiences who are not using my music to stimulate their sex organs. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores. ~ Ornette Coleman

To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have. ~ Ornette Coleman

When I have them working together, it's like a beautiful kaleidoscope. ~ Ornette Coleman

Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

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

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. 'Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles. ~ Ornette Coleman

Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, 'Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!' ~ Ornette Coleman

If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it's information. It's getting the right, good information. ~ Ornette Coleman

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

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way. ~ Miles Davis

All the things that human beings suffer from are how their environment treats them, and how the elements of their planet affects their mind and body - like radiation, cancer, and all. ~ Ornette Coleman

Inside McClintic Sphere was swinging his ass off. His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache.
He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4 ½ reed and the sound was like nothing any of them had heard before. The usual divisions prevailed: collegians did not dig, and left after an average of 1 ½ sets. Personnel from other groups, either with a night off or taking a long break from somewhere crosstown or uptown, listened hard, trying to dig. 'I am still thinking,' they would say if you asked. People at the bar all looked as if they did dig in the sense of understand, approve of, empathize with: but this was probably only because people who prefer to stand at the bar have, universally, an inscrutable look…
…The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn't seem to be listening.
Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was l ~ Thomas Pynchon

The Gallifreyan balls are my favourite because you can juggle with them! ~ Jenna Coleman

I think you're an acting teacher in disguise You're so incredibly intuitive and always passionate and always driven to go further. I never had to worry. All I had to do was look at you, babe. ~ Chad Coleman

I like period drama because everyone is so restrained, but they have all these emotions raging underneath. ~ Jenna-Louise Coleman

What do you do with the kid who can't read? ... Well, what he did with the kid who couldn't read was to make her his mistress. What Farley did was to make her his punching bag. What the Cuban did was to make her his whore, or one among them
so Coleman believed more often than not. ~ Philip Roth

What is it about her? he wondered hopelessly. What did she offer him that he couldn't find elsewhere? Why did he persist in seeking her out, thinking about her, wanting her, when she was exactly wrong for him in nearly every way? ~ Rebecca Coleman

Well, it looks like the all-star balloting is about over, especially in the National and American Leagues. ~ Jerry Coleman

Multiple personality usually develops in the presence of severe and repeated trauma, beginning at a very early age, when the personality is developing. ~ Joan Coleman

There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think ... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage. ~ Dabney Coleman

Grace's gaze skimmed over her, taking in the various marks of possession that decorated her flesh. "Well, short of having 'Property of Trey Coleman' tattooed on your forehead, he couldn't have made it any clearer that he considered you his, could he? ~ Suzanne Wright

The only offering you can make to God is your increasing awareness. ~ Lalla Translation By Coleman Barks

Of course when people are as talented as Jim O'Rourke or Gene Coleman, pretty soon you know that they're going to be part of the bigger scene anyway. ~ Evan Parker

You've created this distance not because your community rejected you but because you felt you were not worthy of being part of it. This is an easy trap to fall into, Benny. Believe me, I've done it myself. For a long time, I labelled myself shy and quiet, until I started to realise that I'd outgrown that label. I wasn't that person anymore. And my label was keeping me from things I wanted to do, people I wanted to get closer to. ~ Colleen Coleman

The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education. ~ James S. Coleman

Your body produces a lot less testosterone each and every single year no matter who you are. We are all human, nobody is super human. ~ Ronnie Coleman

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe. ~ Jim Coleman

DeShaies is like a clock out there. Every other pitch goes one way or the other. ~ Jerry Coleman

Unfortunately, however, I have too many desires to make a good Buddhist. ~ Jim Coleman

I knew what normalcy was, and I wasn't having it. ~ Gary Coleman

I'm lucky to be in a profession where you can keep getting better. ~ Cy Coleman

Usta be young usta be gifted - still black. ~ Wanda Coleman

And with alphabetical irony Nigeria follows New Zealand ~ David Coleman

I don't hurt or want for visibility, but people seem to forget pretty easily. ~ Gary Coleman

Sunday is Senior Citizens' Day. And if you want to become a senior citizen, just call the Padre ticket office. ~ Jerry Coleman

Our feelings are not there to be cast out or conquered. They're there to be engaged and expressed with imagination and intelligence. ~ T.K. Coleman

God has saved my life on more than one occasion. ~ Gloria Coleman

But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through the dark. You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything. He would be describing something in 27 ways. There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number. ~ Michael Ondaatje

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. ~ John Coleman

If you focus on the world's deficiencies and stop there, then you'll probably feel horrible and paralyzed. But why stop there? It's intellectually dishonest to focus on what's wrong with the world without acknowledging our rich history of overcoming incredible odds. ~ T.K. Coleman

At the very least, we want everything to go on hold for a while because there is this feeling that we're heading down a path in a way that we never, ever intended when we were 18 and dreaming of what life would be like. ~ Jonathan Coleman

Victorious living is not simply achieving our goals; victorious living is producing a legacy while we're striving. ~ Kalonda Coleman

The pace of this match is really accelerating, by which I mean it's getting faster all the time. ~ David Coleman

Women really do pay attention to a man's glutes. A tight, compact ass is often voted even more desirable than muscular arms and chest. So, if you're lacking, start squatting! ~ Ronnie Coleman

I even made love to myself once. Uhh, I wasn't suppose to tell you that. ~ Gary B.B. Coleman

I have a problem with capitalism, in it's extreme sense. At the same time communism, I have a problem with that, because every man must feel like a lord in his own manor. ~ Jaz Coleman

VALENE: Father Walsh, now...
COLEMAN: Father Walsh, Father Walsh...
WELSH (exiting, screaming): Me name's Welsh!!! ~ Martin McDonagh

The real meaning of the word paranoia is
a man or person who has the ability to link events that seemingly are not connected. ~ John Coleman

In scoring, I usually start with a sound or group of sounds, searching out what feels right. ~ Jim Coleman

What's an illusion only becomes a reality once we allow those things to play on our intelligence. ~ Shenica N. Coleman

To choose Norm Coleman over Walter Mondale is like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich. ~ Garrison Keillor

If you tell yourself something over and over again, right or wrong, it becomes intuitive. ~ Sidney Coleman

You didn't have to say it was gone. It was gone before it got outta here. It was going that fast. ~ Jerry Coleman

He went into the bathroom, set his Coleman lamp on the sink so that it illuminated the mirror, and for the next fifteen minutes he practiced smiling. He was getting very good at it. ~ Stephen King

If you think there's an important difference between being a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist, then you're making a division between your heart, what you love with, and the way you act in the world. ~ Coleman Barks

Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels. ~ James S. Coleman

I suffer a little bit from Napoleonism, if you will. ~ Gary Coleman

Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are back in Cardiff, back in the box, and back in action-for one of our scariest adventures yet! ~ Steven Moffat