"We need to forget what we think we are, so that we can really become what we are."

“My philosophy is very simple. To feel young, you must work as long as you can.”

“When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play.”

“Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhov, acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion.”

“Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.”

Source : Barbara Hess, Willem De Kooning (2004). “Willem de Kooning, 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse”, p.74, Taschen

“I don't try to please when I play. I try to cure.”

Source : "Ornette Coleman: What I've Learned" by Mark Warren, www.esquire.com. December 14, 2009.

“The press will naturally come and go as it has done with all artists, from David Bowie to Neil Young to U2.”

“I am best viewed from a distance.”

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”