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.
I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.
Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
Going down (descending), I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yard on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.
He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep.
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