It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out.

Japanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

The reason [drummers] call things "unison", and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat; it's so slight that they call it "unison", but it's not unison.

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.