Quotes from Quincy Jones

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

La edad de una persona puede determinarse por el grado de dolor que experimenta cuando entra en contacto con una idea nueva

You have to know that your real home is within.

The only justification for looking down on anyone, is that you're going to stop and pick them up.

Once a task has just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.

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.

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

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.

It's amazing, the psychology of growing in your field, no matter what you do. Growth comes from mistakes. You have to cherish them, so you can learn from them. Your mistakes are your greatest gift.

Your music can never be more or less than you are as a human being.