I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

I'm not against god, I'm against the misuse of god.

I wasn't born with enough middle fingers

I fall in love with everything I also hate everything. It’s very hard to be a misanthrope and a romantic.

Enjoy your faults, that's what separates you from the rest of the world.

The imagination is precious. Don't lose it. Don't lose the child in you.

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

What doesn't kill you is gonna leave a scar.

If you want to find out who your real friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump aren't your friends.

You get depressed because you know that you're not what you should be.

In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn't dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.

I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker's next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.