The climate in the ’50s and ’60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious. – Quincy Jones
My grandmother had this high-tech security system – a rusty nail she used to lock the door. – Quincy Jones
We spent most of our life almost like street rats just running around the street until we were ten years old. – Quincy Jones
Sidney Poitier and Sidney Lumet were instrumental in helping me get started as the first black composer to get name credit for movie scores. – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
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.’ – Quincy Jones
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.’ – Quincy Jones
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? – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we’ve had in a long time. It’s sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America. – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn’t stand seeing them hurt like this. – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out. – Quincy Jones
I think the attraction of ‘American Idol’ is about the basic human nature attitude that is, ‘We can put you up there. But we can take you down.’ – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones
I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is. – Quincy Jones
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! – Quincy Jones
Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That’s the soul of a country. – Quincy Jones
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. – Quincy Jones