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

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

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.

If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.

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

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.

My music is evidence of my souls will to live.