Quincy Jones Quotes

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

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.

The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.

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

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.

Music was the one thing I could control. It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didnt have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, pencilled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool.

China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right.

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

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.

Cherish your mistakes, and you won't keep making them over and over again. It's the same with heartbreaks and girls and everything else. Cherish them, and they'll put some wealth in you.

It's very freaky in Chicago.There's something in the water there, I don't know what it is. But the actual word Chicago means, in the Indian language, garlic. It was just garlic and mosquitoes there.And that is the roughest city on the planet, and I been to every place in the world.

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.

We stole a box of honey jars one time and went out in the woods and took care of the whole box. I don't think I touched honey again for 20 years. I never wanted to see honey again.

There's nothing in the world worse than having an opportunity that you're not prepared for. Good luck usually follows the collision of opportunity and preparation - it's a result of that collision. You've got to be prepared. So, make your mistakes now and make them quickly. If you've made the mistakes, you know what to expect the next time. That's how you become valuable.

It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair ...

A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that's the bottom line.

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

I go to the favelas in Brazil. It's the same in the South Side of Chicago. It's the same, or just more violent. We're trying to get them to stop selling dope. You see kids with AK-47s, and nine-year-olds with nine millimeters. You know, they don't play. They make us look like nuns.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

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.

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

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

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

Thank God, 50 years ago I learned that a great song, our entire business is all based on two things; a great song and a great story. Film, television, if you don't have that story, nothing else matters. You don't call anybody else or direct anybody. The same with a song. A great song can make the worst singer in the world a star.

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

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

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

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

I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy said: 'Idiot, just put a flat on the third line and it's a key signature, you know?'

The process is the most beautiful part.

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.

My daddy was a carpenter that worked with the Jones boys, who are the most notorious in America. The black gangsters, you know, they were no joke. And he was their master carpenter. He used to build their homes, and all I saw when I was 11 years old were dead bodies and tommy guns and stogies, and backrooms, you know, Drexel Wine and Liquor, with the big piles of money underneath.

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

The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country....If we had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we would have lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If we had lost Malcolm X at 25, we would have lost a hustler named Detroit Red. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-band trumpet player and aspiring composer--just a sliver of my eventual life potential.

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.

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

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

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.

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.

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.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

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.

My son is a hip-hop producer.

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.

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.

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

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

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.'

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

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.

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

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

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony ... that's the science and the craft.

I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music.

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

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.

It's the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.

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

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I'm not a psychiatrist.

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.

Prince.. a true artist in every sense of the world.Gone way too soon.

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

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.'

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

Well, listen, anger doesn't get anything done, so you have to find out: How do you make it work? That's why I was always maniacal about transforming every problem into a puzzle which I can solve. I can solve a puzzle - a problem just stresses me out.

Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit

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.

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.

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.

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.'

I never felt like I had a mother.

I'm just a musician and a record producer.

Imagine what a harmonious world it ...

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.

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?

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

I never felt like that in my life. I didn't know human beings played these instruments. I heard them in Chicago and Louisville and St. Louis all my life, you know? But I didn't know human beings played them, you know? So the next day I went to Coontz Junior High School and I started on sousaphone, tuba, B-flat baritone, E-flat alto, French horn, trombone.

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.