I am Charles Mingus, half black man, not even white enough to pass for nothing but black. I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazzman, but not famed enough to make a living in this society.

Making the complicated simple is true 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.'

I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.

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

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