Quincy Jones

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, young and old shared just a little of what he is good at doing.

You gotta do what you love and really believe in it because that is your truth.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

What’s tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay and the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

You can have tone and technique but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.