94 Quotes by Ornette Coleman

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you’re going to do it but when you do it.

When I have them working together, it’s like a beautiful kaleidoscope.

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.

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

I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That’s what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.

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

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.

It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that’s out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they’re doing.