Quincy Jones

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.

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.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

Surrender your whole being to a note and gravity disappears.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

Something just grabs you about a song.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

Don’t bullshit, just play.