68 Quotes by Charles Mingus

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.

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.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace;...

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

In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn’t dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don’t care what you play anyway.

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.

Yeah, I pledge allegiance, to the United States of America... I pledge an allegiance to see that someday they will live up to their promises, to the victims that they call citizens...