Coleman Quotes

“This book is dedicated to Thomas Coleman, a retired longshoreman, who died in his attic at 2214 St. Roch Avenue in New Orleans' 8th Ward on or about August 29, 2005. He had a can of juice and a bedspread at his side when the waters rose. There were more than a thousand like him.”

— Chris Rose

“It's always the quiet ones who are the most trouble. - Ethan Coleman to Alex Gold, Undying Blood”

— R.J. Morse, R.J. Brookes

“I couldn't imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing”

— Philip Roth

“What do you do with the kid who can't read? ... Well, what he did with the kid who couldn't read was to make her his mistress. What Farley did was to make her his punching bag. What the Cuban did was to make her his whore, or one among them
so Coleman believed more often than not.”

— Philip Roth

“Michael Coleman, now that was a boy that taught me some stuff too.”

— Jimmy Smith

“One person I haven't worked with yet, who I find hilarious, is Chad Coleman.”

— Josh McDermitt

“I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.”

— Lou Reed

“When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.”

— Gerry Mulligan

“I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have. -Coleman Cox”

— Jeff Olson

“I appreciate men like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins very much.”

— Stan Getz

“It was exciting just to stand in front of the hallowed ground of Birdland that had been blessed by John Coltrane, or the Five Spot on St. Mark's Place where Billie Holiday used to sing, where Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman opened the field of jazz like human can openers.”

— Patti Smith

“As Annie Proulx is to Wyoming, so is Jane Candia Coleman to Arizona.”

— Clive Sinclair

“The model for South America was Broadway actress Maxine Elliot. North America, a pretty blonde, was modeled on Maud Coleman Woods of Charlottesville, Virginia. (Sadly, she would die of typhoid fever that summer, ten days before McKinley arrived in Buffalo, thereby never living to see herself on a coaster, every southern belle's dream.)”

— Sarah Vowell

“I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.”

— Oscar Peterson

“With the energy he had conserved yesterday letting her dress him, he had written a note and pinned it in his pocket. IF FOUND DEAD SHIP EXPRESS COLLECT TO COLEMAN PARRUM, CORINTH, GEORGIA. Under this he had continued: COLEMAN SELL MY BELONGINGS AND PAY THE FREIGHT ON ME & THE UNDERTAKER. ANYTHING LEFT OVER YOU CAN KEEP. YOURS TRULY T. C. TANNER. P.S. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DON'T LET THEM TALK YOU INTO COMING UP HERE. ITS NO KIND OF PLACE.”

— Flannery O'Connor

“The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman.”

— Pat Metheny

“Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.”

— Patti Smith

“Jerry Coleman was the kind of player who made me proud to wear the pinstripes.”

— Joe Torre

“The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“You can tell a million different stories about love. Especially when it's love with someone who's different."
You mean a monster?" Coleman said.
"Well, that's what you think at first. But it's like, um, Beauty and the Beast. When you find out that the monster is actually ... nice."
...
"But doesn't real love work the other way round?" Kiralee asked. "You start by thinking someone's fabulous, and by the end of the piece you realize he's a monster!"
"Or that you're the monster yourself," Oscar said.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.”

— Lou Reed

“I've seen 'Mork & Mindy' a couple times. Robin Williams amazes me. And I love Gary Coleman. He puts me away. He puts everybody away.”

— Lucille Ball

“The pair sat relaxed and stared toward U.S. 1 at nothing in particular. Coleman rested his joint on the edge of the window and popped a beer. "This is the life." "You said it, buddy." Serge uncapped a bottle of water. "Florida, a full tank of gas, and no appointments.”

— Tim Dorsey

“He's coming off the bridge," said Serge. "The rocks will start soon." "Rocks?" "It's local tradition, and another reason I love the Keys." Serge stood and put on his sneakers. "It's our version of when those people went out to the overpasses and waved at O. J. Simpson during the slow-motion chase. Except in the Keys, when there's a high-speed pursuit on TV heading south, the locals line the road and wait for the car to come off the bridge to Key Largo. Last time was around Christmas." "You're right." Coleman pointed at the TV again. "They're lining the side of the road. They're throwing rocks." "And we're at Mile Marker 105, so that gives us about three minutes." Serge tightened the Velcro straps on his shoes. "Let's go throw rocks.”

— Tim Dorsey

“This is why a woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, calls "relentlessly pleasant."22 This method requires smiling frequently, expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals, and approaching the negotiation as solving a problem as opposed to taking a critical stance.23 Most negotiations involve drawn-out, successive moves, so women need to stay focused  ...  and smile.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

“A woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, calls relentlessly pleasant”

— Sheryl Sandberg

“Because you know, truth is, I don't give a shit about some scratched-up vinyl Rahsaan Kirk, Ornette Coleman sound-like-a-goose-trying-to-fuck-a-bicycle bootleg pressing from the rare Paris concert of 1967. I spend five minutes listening to that, I'm like to want to slap somebody. I”

— Michael Chabon

“But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through the dark. You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything. He would be describing something in 27 ways. There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number.”

— Michael Ondaatje

“Wynn picked up the note, unfolded it, and read aloud. 'Call Wynnie-the-Pooh. Out of salt. Important. Dig on Coleman, Garvey/CG Towers, Uncle Griffin. Paris. Bank for box.”

— Christine Warren

“Of course when people are as talented as Jim O'Rourke or Gene Coleman, pretty soon you know that they're going to be part of the bigger scene anyway.”

— Evan Parker

“A day in the life of Ronnie Coleman mainly consists of eating,
training or sleeping.”

— Ronnie Coleman

“I'd listened to [Ornette Coleman] all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby.”

— Roy Eldridge

“Chano Pozo created the role of the conga soloist in the modern band, somewhat th way Coleman Hawkins created the solo tenor sax.”

— Ned Sublette

“A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!”

— Cannonball Adderley

“At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.”

— Thelonious Monk

“I'm wearing out this new Coal Men record. I think it's masterful start-to-finish. Dave Coleman is one of Americana music's great songwriters, and I hope this record gets the attention it deserves.”

— Todd Snider

“Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal.”

— Paul Bley

“I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.”

— Paul Desmond

“Mr. John Coleman, who invented the Weather Channel, represents over 30,000 scientists who cannot get their voices heard on the main stream media, since they hold a viewpoint on Global Warming that runs opposite to the government and media template. The voices of reason are being suppressed.”

— Peter DeGraaf

“I don't think there has been any mayor in America scrutinized that way. I don't think there has been any mayor as a matter of fact, Coleman Young I think received an incredible amount of scrutiny and he was kind of the poster child for that in Detroit. He was the first Black mayor who really expressed his manhood in a different way than had been seen from African-American man that was projected across the country.”

— Kwame Kilpatrick

“Marsha Coleman-Adebayo clearly and engagingly tells us Americans a truth that we might not want to hear but should.”

— Dal LaMagna

“If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
television with pool cues, who would win?
1) Ricky Schroder
2) Gary Coleman
3) The television viewing public”

— David Letterman

“Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!”

— Mel Brooks

“I didn't miss any games, but Coach Knight came out and spent three days with my family in Chicago when my dad passed away. I came back and played and it was good therapy for me. Having a basketball family and a coach who understood and actually became like a father figure for that time was comforting to me, and I'm sure that will be comforting to Coleman.”

— Mike Krzyzewski

“When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads”

— Miles Davis

“Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk”

— John Lewis

“To choose Norm Coleman over Walter Mondale is like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich.”

— Garrison Keillor

“If you're from New York and you're Catholic, you're still Jewish. If you're from Butte Montana and you're Jewish, you're still goyisch. The Air Force is Jewish, the Marine Corps dangerous goyisch. Rye Bread is Jewish, instant potatoes, scary goyisch. Eddie Cantor is goyisch, George Jessel is goyisch-Coleman Hawkins is Jewish.”

— Lenny Bruce

“The Coleman lantern is the symbol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America, with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America.”

— Richard Brautigan

“Scientists say because of global warming they expect the world's oceans to rise four and a half feet. The scientists say this can mean only one thing: Gary Coleman is going to drown.”

— Conan O'Brien