If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it’s information. It’s getting the right, good information. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I’ve never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I’d be left with the record company. And then – because they got fired – the record company wouldn’t do anything for me. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I’ve been playing with Blackwell over 20 years. We used to play when I first went to Los Angeles. Blackwell plays the drums as if he’s playing a wind instrument. Actually, he sounds more like a talking drum. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I’m having this conversation with you now. I’m talking, but I’m thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I’m concentrating on what you’re saying. So that means there’s more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person’s got you doing. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, ‘Dad, these people are writing about me like I’m an adult. Don’t they know I’m a kid?’ I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player. Ornette Coleman Read Quote
