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.

I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

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

Jazz is the language of the emotions.

Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?

Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.

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