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 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

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 don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.
Ornette Coleman

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

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

I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
Ornette Coleman