I hope that on my tombstone it says 'Born 1933, died 2043.' I hope that's my legacy.
Interpretation
Quincy Jones expresses a wish for his legacy to reflect the years he spent contributing to the world.
In this quote, Quincy Jones conveys a desire for people to remember him not just for his achievements, but for the impact he made during his lifetime. By highlighting the dates of his birth and death, he emphasizes the importance of the journey in between, suggesting that true legacy is measured by how one lives and influences others.
In practice
During a speech at a memorial service, I might quote Quincy Jones to highlight the importance of shaping one's legacy.
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 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.
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.
Most people spend their entire lives on a fantasy island called 'Someday I'll.'
They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.
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