Some people have a negative attitude, and that's their disability.
My music is evidence of my souls will to live.
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 never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
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 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.
Sell is tough. It's the worst, it's the most difficult thing of all.
I cannot here avoid giving my most decided sufferage in favour of the moral qualities of maniacs. I have no where met, excepting in romances, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned. . . than in the lunatic asylum, during their intervals of calmness and reason.
Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall; that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you; That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
The important thing is to take the bricklayer and make him understand that he’s building a home, not just laying bricks.