Charles Mingus Quotes

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

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.

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.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Making the complicated simple is true creativity.

If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.

Life has many changes. Tomorrow it may rain, and it's supposed to be sunshine, 'cause it's summertime. But God's got a funny soul, he plays like Charlie Parker.

I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.

I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.

Everything I do is Mingus.

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.

Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon.

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.

If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

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've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you - the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.

I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.

My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable.

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.

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.

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.'

Jazz is the language of the emotions.

Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.

I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.