Quincy Jones Quotes

I knew so many gangsters, and I call on that experience with them for characters.

Jacare is a gangster. He's been in the game for a long time.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.

I think we have always had a fascination for gangs and gangsters, and I think we always will.

You see mob guys when you play in nightclubs. It's part of the protocol.

Never piss off a gangster.

There are many people who think I'm actually a gangster or a mafioso, largely because of 'Goodfella.'

I don't think there's much a person could say about me. My gangster's never been on trial.

What I learned about the mob wasn't through lectures at the academy.

As a teen-ager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.

I was a street guy. I mean, I grew up in an Italian neighborhood with mob guys around. Where I grew up, you gambled, you shot dice, you played cards, you went to the track. So the mob to me was not strange, it was not like I was an F.B.I. agent from Salt Lake City.

And Alpo ordered guys to slaughter guys, and the whole Harlem was in tears when Rich Porter died.

The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

I know these dirty cops that'll get us in if we murder some Wop.

In Paris there are two dens, one for thieves, the other for murderers. The den of thieves is the Stock Exchange; the den of murderers is the Courthouse.

I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.

My daddy was a carpenter that worked with the Jones boys, who are the most notorious in America. The black gangsters, you know, they were no joke. And he was their master carpenter. He used to build their homes, and all I saw when I was 11 years old were dead bodies and tommy guns and stogies, and backrooms, you know, Drexel Wine and Liquor, with the big piles of money underneath.

What do you mean "gangsters"? It's business.

Let me tell you, Alex. He's a crook. He's based here in Miami. He's a nasty piece of work." "He's mexican" Troy added.

...in the middle of Little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn't do diddily

If I hadn't made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood.

We should not let this be like the history of the mafia which was allowed to grow into a nationwide organization which infiltrated and corrupted so many areas of society for such a long period of time.