[Coleman]

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”
---Charlie Mingus (string bass and band leader)


“Well, I’m too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I’m just gon’ keep playin’”
--Clark Terry (jazz trumpet player and band leader)


“It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.”
--Dizzy Gillespie (jazz trumpet and band leader)


“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”
--Frank Zappa


“[Bebop is] Chinese music.”
--Louis Armstrong (He hated bebop and liked his 'old-school' style of playing and didn't like anything that Dizzy Gillespie was working on)


“Never play anything the same way twice.”
--Louis Armstrong


“When you’re creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain’t the limit.”
--Miles Davis


“Nothing is out of the question for me. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light…Then I’m grateful.”
--Miles Davis


“So I believed in studying just because I knew that education was a privilege. And it wasn’t so much necessarily the information that you were studying, but just the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don’t want to do, to receive the information . . .”
--Wynton Marsalis


“Master your instrument, Master the music, and then forget all that *!xy!@ and just play.”
--Charlie Parker