Quincy Jones Quotes

• To try to talk to the young people who will run the future—in ten minutes—is a little like trying to put a cantaloupe in a coke bottle.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School, Schools, Violin

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Television

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Experience, Work

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Hurt Feelings

•  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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Imagine

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Attention

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Amazing

• 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?

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Job, Work

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Family, Father

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Imagine, Crime and Punishment

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Went

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Like, Live

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Honey

• 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.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in America

  Tags in Block

• When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Mother

  Tags in Hard

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Quincy Jones

  Topics in Uncategorized

Quincy Jones (49)

Birth:	14th March, 1933
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer, Producer, Music Conductor

Related Authors

• Luciano Berio
• Arthur Bliss
• Bruno Walter
• Charlie Hunter
• Cliff Martinez
• Frederic Chopin
• Leo Ornstein
• Tom Waits
• Robert Mitchum
• Sir George Henry Martin

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 18th May

Births

• 1868 - Nicholas II
• 1883 - Walter Gropius
• 1920 - Pope John Paul II
• 1930 - Warren Rudman
• 1904 - Shunryu Suzuki

Deaths

• 2009 - Velupillai Prabhakaran
• 1955 - Mary McLeod Bethune
• 2012 - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
• 1799 - Pierre Beaumarchais
• 1981 - William Saroyan