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.

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.

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'

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

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.

Everything I do is 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.