Charles Mingus

“My music is evidence of my soul's will to live.”

“I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.”

“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.”

“Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.”

“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.”

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.”

“I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.”