Quotes from Quincy Jones

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

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.

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

I'm just a musician and a record producer.

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

I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.

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

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!

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

I'm not a psychiatrist.

I've met every freak in the business.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.

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

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

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 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.