Quincy Jones

Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

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

I'd been in love before - I was always in love.

I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.

My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.

I don't remember feeling love.

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

I never felt like I had a mother.

A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!

I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.

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

I'm just a musician and a record producer.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

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

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.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm Pisces with Leo rising. The Pisces part is the dreamer. The Leo says, 'Let's execute.'

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.

Cherish your mistakes, and you won't keep making them over and over again. It's the same with heartbreaks and girls and everything else. Cherish them, and they'll put some wealth in you.

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.

Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.

I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages.

I live on the Internet.

Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling.

When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.

When I was 14, I would sit up in my room and write till my eyes would bleed.

Unfortunately, America doesn't have a minister of culture, and I don't understand why. It's really bad for young people.

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.

I believe in astrology as much as I do in genetics.

I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.

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

When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it.

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'

Sidney Poitier and Sidney Lumet were instrumental in helping me get started as the first black composer to get name credit for movie scores.

I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy said: 'Idiot, just put a flat on the third line and it's a key signature, you know?'

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

After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.

I don't ever want to grow up. That's boring.

I've never been bored in my life, man. I've never been bored or lonely. Are you kidding? No way! I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to Greek to French, Swedish, Russian... How can you get bored?

China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

I hope that on my tombstone it says 'Born 1933, died 2043.' I hope that's my legacy.

I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.