Quincy Jones

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

There’s two things you can’t live without. Water and music.

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.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

Something just grabs you about a song.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

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

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.