Quotes from Quincy Jones

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?'

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

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.

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.

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

My son is a hip-hop producer.

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

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

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

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 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 was the most subtle person in the world.

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

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

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.

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.

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