Quincy Jones

“Everybody, no matter what vocation they're looking at, should add music as an essential to their curriculum. Music can be a very important part of your soul and your growth as a human being. It's so powerful.”

“I'm not a psychiatrist.”

“After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.”

“I have all the tools and gadgets. I tell my son, who's a producer, 'You never work for the machine; the machine works for you.'”

“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.”

“Seattle is like a global gumbo, a melting pot with all kinds of people - the rich, the poor, white people, some Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and black people - they're all here.”

“It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do.”

“The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.”

“I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.”

“I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music.”

“I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.”

“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.”

“I was rapping in 1939. It's old. The roots are complex. And kids don't know.”

“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?”

“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 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.”

“My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.”

“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.”

“I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.”

“Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.”