Charles Mingus Quotes

You never know what curve balls life is going to throw you and there's no way I can predict anything or make any assumptions about what the rest of my life is going to be like.

I didn't know what the hell Charlie Parker was playing... I just liked the way he played.

Man plans, but God decides.

I love guys like Charlie Parker.

Mostly I play with records. I play with my friend Bill Evans.

What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.

Life has a way of creeping up on us.

I grew up listening to Puerto Rican music like everybody else. But when I listened to Charlie Parker for the first time, I said, 'How does this guy play so fast?'

What makes jazz different is that you can't predict it, it's all about freedom. Just when you think you know what you're going to hear there'll be a left turn, a jazz musician will change it up.

Charlie Parker is my greatest inspiration as a saxophone player - anything that involves him entails a large amount of respect.

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.

In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era--by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"--my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god.

The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker's next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

God always comes up with a third act twist -- and we won't know until we die whether the play was a comedy or a tragedy.

If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

If you want to see God laugh, make a plan.

Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled.

God put us here, on this carnival ride. We close our eyes never knowing where it'll take us next.

Usually, you get a script and you have the whole story. All the acts are there, for a play. You know what happens in the first, second and third acts, and you know how it starts, where you go and where it finishes. [With American Horror Story: Asylum], it's a whole new experience. I don't know where it's going, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It's been an interesting way to work. It's made me work in a much more fluid, braver way, just taking every chance that comes along.

God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them.

For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun...

Not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.