Quincy Jones Quotes


 
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Best 59 Quotes by Quincy Jones – Page 1 of 2

“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!”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I don't ever want to grow up. That's boring.”

“I don't remember feeling love.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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“If all of the people in Hollywood who had plastic surgery went on vacation, there wouldn't be a person left in town.”


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“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.”

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

“I live on the Internet.”

“I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.”

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

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

“I never felt like I had a mother.”

“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 travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“I'd been in love before – I was always in love.”

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“I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used.

I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.”


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