Quincy Jones
18 quotes
Biography
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was an American record producer, composer, arranger, record executive, conductor, trumpeter, film and television producer, and bandleader. During his seven-decade career, he received dozens of accolades, including 28 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for seven Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards.
"It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do."
"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."
"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."
"Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country."
"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."
"Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release."
"If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture."
"I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day."
"The only justification for looking down on anyone, is that you're going to stop and pick them up."
"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."
"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."
"Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing."
"I think the attraction of 'American Idol' is about the basic human nature attitude that is, 'We can put you up there. But we can take you down.'"
"Young people should travel, and they don't. You can't know if you don't go."
"I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages."
"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."
"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.'"