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Charles Mingus Quotes

Charles Mingus Quotes.

If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.
Charles Mingus
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.
Charles Mingus
Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.
Charles Mingus
Jazz music is a language of the emotions.
Charles Mingus
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am.
Charles Mingus
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
Charles Mingus
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.
Charles Mingus
They’re singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
Charles Mingus
Bach is how buildings got taller. It’s how we got to the moon.
Charles Mingus
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.
Charles Mingus
I’m going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That’s the one place I can be free. But the reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
Charles Mingus
My music is evidence of my soul’s will to live.
Charles Mingus
I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
Charles Mingus
Making the complicated simple is true creativity.
Charles Mingus
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.
Charles Mingus
Everything I do is Mingus.
Charles Mingus
My music is evidence of my souls will to live.
Charles Mingus
I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.
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.
Charles Mingus
If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There’d be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats
Charles Mingus
I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.
Charles Mingus
I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.
Charles Mingus