I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it's not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.
Interpretation
Stay humble in your creativity and graceful in your success, recognizing that your talents are given to you for a greater purpose.
Quincy Jones emphasizes the importance of humility and grace in the journey of creativity and success. He suggests that recognizing oneself as a conduit for a higher power fosters a mindset that allows one to sustain their achievements and contributions for the long term, reminding us that individual success is tied to something greater than ourselves.
In practice
During a motivational speech, one could quote Quincy Jones to inspire young artists to remain humble.
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?
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
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.'
The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities.
Maybe as times get worse we get better. Our pain makes us feel other people's too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway.
It will not always be summer: build barns.
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
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