A Quote by Ornette Coleman

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. 'Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.
I went through a very hairy period. I had a movie where I was going to play Walt Whitman that fell through. At the time, I had grown this huge beard and very long hair. But then, the movie got canceled, I had some other parts, and I currently have very short hair. So, when I look in the mirror, I don't know who I am exactly. It's interesting.
I really like the cute Beatles, the beginning. I don't really like the moustached Beatles very much. And then the hippie Beatles I'm not super-thrilled with, although they had good songs.
My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.
I've had a beard a fair few times and, like most guys, when I shave the beard off I experiment with a few different facial hair styles on the way down to clean shaven. But I've never actually had a moustache for any longer than about 10-15 minutes - during the process of shaving off the beard.
I have a love-hate relationship with New Orleans, which is the strongest sort of relationship. I've had some extraordinary, beautiful, poetic experiences in this city and I've had some terrible experiences in this city. I'm drawn to New Orleans, in many ways feel I grew up in New Orleans, even though I'm from the West.
My first couple of years in the league left me very unstable. I had some times where I played well, and I had some times were I really did not get the opportunity. After Rick Pitino gave up on me my first year, people were like, 'He can't play.' So I had to get over that hump.
They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.
Back when I went to Louisiana State University a million years ago, we got the Baton Rouge paper. But if you wanted to read 'The New York Times' or 'The Wall Street Journal,' you had to go to the reading room of the student union, and you got the edition several days after it had been published, and you had to read it on a wooden stick.
I really did have this powerful sense, when I was in New Orleans after the storm, of watching all these profiteers descend on Baton Rouge to lobby to get rid of the housing projects and privatise the school system - I thought I was in some science-fiction experiment.
The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. . . . New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.
Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.
I did four movies where I gained, like, fifty pounds. I had curly hair, and I had all of this facial hair. I had put on all this weight for these movies, and I did four or five of them back-to-back. Then I cut the weight and I got fit again. I cut my beard and I took away the mustache, and people were like, 'What are you doing?'
I was at Live Aid the original, looking like Rolf Harris for some reason. I had a really long beard that day for some reason.
I used to work at this store called Music Plus in San Clemente, California, when I was growing up, and then they became Blockbuster Music, and, like, you had to get a haircut to work there, and at the time I had some pretty long hair. So after that policy was imposed, I knew that was going to be my last summer working there.
Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy.
There were so many bands in New Orleans. But most of the musicians had day jobs, you know -- trades. They were bricklayers and carpenters and cigar makers and plasterers. Some had little businesses of their own -- coal and wood and vegetable stores. Some worked on the cotton exchange and some were porters. They had to work at other trades 'cause there were so many musicians, so many bands. It was the most musical town in the country.
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