Quotes By Quincy Jones

I never felt like I had a mother.

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.

I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

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

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

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

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

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.

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

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 don't remember feeling love.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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'm not a psychiatrist.

I've met every freak in the business.

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

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.

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!

My son is a hip-hop producer.

My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store.

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

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

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.