Quincy Jones Quotes

#1. Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.

Quincy Jones

#2. Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.

Quincy Jones

#3. Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in '98. He left me his ring. I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don't need a passport. I just flash my ring.

Quincy Jones

#4. When I was 14, I would sit up in my room and write till my eyes would bleed.

Quincy Jones

#5. We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

Quincy Jones

#6. Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

Quincy Jones

#7. When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it.

Quincy Jones

#8. Everybody, no matter what vocation they're looking at, should add music as an essential to their curriculum. Music can be a very important part of your soul and your growth as a human being. It's so powerful.

Quincy Jones

#9. Let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's leave space for God to come into the room.

Quincy Jones

#10. It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn't stand seeing them hurt like this.

Quincy Jones

#11. When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.

Quincy Jones

#12. It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do.

Quincy Jones

#13. I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

Quincy Jones

#14. Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling.

Quincy Jones

#15. Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.

Quincy Jones

#16. Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?

Quincy Jones

#17. When I was 14, I was a passenger in a terrible accident.

Quincy Jones

#18. Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.

Quincy Jones

#19. When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.

Quincy Jones

#20. Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit

Quincy Jones

#21. I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it's not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.

Quincy Jones

#22. I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!

Quincy Jones

#23. I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

Quincy Jones

#24. If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Quincy Jones

#25. I never felt like I had a mother.

Quincy Jones

#26. You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.

Quincy Jones

#27. Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

Quincy Jones

#28. I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.

Quincy Jones

#29. I've never been bored in my life, man. I've never been bored or lonely. Are you kidding? No way! I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to Greek to French, Swedish, Russian ... How can you get bored?

Quincy Jones

#30. Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush

Quincy Jones

#31. I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.

Quincy Jones

#32. I live on the Internet.

Quincy Jones

#33. Seattle is like a global gumbo, a melting pot with all kinds of people - the rich, the poor, white people, some Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and black people - they're all here.

Quincy Jones

#34. We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.

Quincy Jones

#35. My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

Quincy Jones

#36. I don't remember feeling love.

Quincy Jones

#37. I don't ever want to grow up. That's boring.

Quincy Jones

#38. It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.

Quincy Jones

#39. I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.

Quincy Jones

#40. A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

Quincy Jones

#41. I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

Quincy Jones

#42. My son is a hip-hop producer.

Quincy Jones

#43. After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.

Quincy Jones

#44. I've always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, "Ain't that the truth."

Quincy Jones

#45. I was the most subtle person in the world.

Quincy Jones

#46. All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

Quincy Jones

#47. After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.

Quincy Jones

#48. Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.

Quincy Jones

#49. I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

Quincy Jones

#50. The process is the most beautiful part.

Quincy Jones

#51. If I don't have a mother, I'll let music be my mother.

Quincy Jones

#52. We spent most of our life almost like street rats just running around the street until we were ten years old.

Quincy Jones

#53. I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.

Quincy Jones

#54. Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Quincy Jones

#55. Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

Quincy Jones

#56. Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

Quincy Jones

#57. Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

Quincy Jones

#58. You make your mistakes to learn how to get to the good stuff.

Quincy Jones

#59. I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

Quincy Jones

#60. I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.

Quincy Jones

#61. A person's age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.

Quincy Jones

#62. I was rapping in 1939. It's old. The roots are complex. And kids don't know.

Quincy Jones

#63. The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.

Quincy Jones

#64. Empty the cup every time and it comes back at twice as full. I developed that attitude when I was very, very young, when I decided I didn't want to be a gangster anymore. Whether it's just shining shoes, I said okay, I'm going to do this better than anybody else did it in my life.

Quincy Jones

#65. Michael (Jackson) was so shy, he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat with my hands over my eyes-and the lights off.

Quincy Jones

#66. I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.

Quincy Jones

#67. Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'

Quincy Jones

#68. I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.

Quincy Jones

#69. When you're over the hill, that's when you pick up speed.

Quincy Jones

#70. I got to trumpet, finally. That's why I love to write for brass, and [Count] Basie and [Frank] Sinatra and all that stuff, 'cause that's just like part of my DNA.

Quincy Jones

#71. Young people should travel, and they don't. You can't know if you don't go.

Quincy Jones

#72. The relationship with a producer and an artist is really special.It's got to be love and respect, amazing mutual respect for each other, because that's what makes a good record.

Quincy Jones

#73. I think the attraction of 'American Idol' is about the basic human nature attitude that is, 'We can put you up there. But we can take you down.'

Quincy Jones

#74. I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.

Quincy Jones

#75. My brother died of cancer two years ago (1998), renal cell carcinoma. He was my only real brother and I didn't know what to do. I'd never been so desperate in my life.

Quincy Jones

#76. Benny [Carter] opened the eyes of a lot of producers and studios, so that they could understand that you could go to blacks for other things outside of blues and barbecue. He's a total musician. He was the pioneer, he was the foundation. He made it possible for that doubt to be taken away.

Quincy Jones

#77. I've met every freak in the business.

Quincy Jones

#78. I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

Quincy Jones

#79. Imagine what a harmonious world it ...

Quincy Jones

#80. I never cared about money or fame, and I don't care now. I follow the groove, and money always follows.

Quincy Jones

#81. Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.

Quincy Jones

#82. Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together ... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

Quincy Jones

#83. It was messed up, because in 1947 my family moved to Seattle and I had to get up at 5:00 o'clock in the morning to catch the ferry back to Bremerton every morning because I was Boys Club president.

Quincy Jones

#84. A lot of the guys were like that - Oscar Pettiford - they just took me under their wing, and that's why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.

Quincy Jones

#85. I'm Pisces with Leo rising. The Pisces part is the dreamer. The Leo says, 'Let's execute.'

Quincy Jones

#86. Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.

Quincy Jones

#87. I believe that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens.

Quincy Jones

#88. Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.

Quincy Jones

#89. You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

Quincy Jones

#90. My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.

Quincy Jones

#91. If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.

Quincy Jones

#92. I'd been in love before - I was always in love.

Quincy Jones

#93. Unfortunately, America doesn't have a minister of culture, and I don't understand why. It's really bad for young people.

Quincy Jones

#94. Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.

Quincy Jones

#95. I believe in astrology as much as I do in genetics.

Quincy Jones

#96. My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store.

Quincy Jones

#97. Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Quincy Jones

#98. A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!

Quincy Jones

#99. I hope that on my tombstone it says 'Born 1933, died 2043.' I hope that's my legacy.

Quincy Jones

#100. Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'

Quincy Jones