At Least I Have My Music Quotes & Sayings

I am definitely not listening to anything remotely close to my music, at least not on a nice day. — William Fitzsimmons

But at least he thinks I have a boyfriend, I tell myself. It could be worse. If he thought I was interested in him for real then I would have to dig a hole and bury myself in it because the smug would be too much to bear.
I reach automatically for my computer and open it up. I need some music to drown my shame in. Some people have tequila to send them into catatonic oblivion, I have music. — Sarah Alderson

If my music is political in a way, and it might be, it's in the way of generating a sensitivity in people, a deeper awareness of the world around them. That's my goal, at least. — Phil Elvrum

It was almost pleasant, in a life-sucks-but-at-least-there's-good-music sort of way. — Lauren Myracle

Music can always be a life-changing experience, for musicians and fans, or at least life-affecting, but it depends on to what degree. — Jimmy Page

Our sense of a composition largely inheres in how we feel about the individual parts; narrative arcs are almost always essential in drama but (unless there are lyrics involved) often less essential in music. All of this is, I suspect, again symptomatic of human memory limitations. We live, to a remarkable degree, in the present; what happened thirty seconds ago is already rapidly fading from our memory (or at least rapidly becomes harder for us to retrieve). — Gary F. Marcus

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week. — Charles Darwin

I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own - hard for me, at least. — Gene Wolfe

I do believe young people should be obligated to try different types of music - that is what education is. But once you're in a situation as an adult, it doesn't benefit anybody - at least in my experience - to force music on people that they don't like or do not have an interest in - whether it's three-hundred years old or newly written. — Michael Hersch

I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me. — Carrie Brownstein

I wish I could free myself from making music that has a dancefloor-function, or at least try to focus more on all the other elements in music. — Hans-Peter Lindstrom

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least. — John H. McWhorter

I think that today, in Europe at least, people don't tend to think so much about the instrument that is producing the music; they are more interested to see if the musician actually has something to say. — Michala Petri

But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there - good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you're uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch. — Sarah Vowell

You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish. — S. Jae-Jones

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or try to conceal it.
Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets who you happen to admire. — Ezra Pound

I believe that music offers us possibilities for analysis, at least in my case, more profound in many ways, but at the same time that profundity is an accessible profundity that has atemporal repercussions. — Bocafloja

I think with drama, at least for me, my process, there's a lot of thought. I do a lot of back story. I listen to a lot of music. I'm very committed to a process when it comes to drama, but with comedy, I think it's really about letting loose. — Jamie-Lynn Sigler

I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out as I go or at least try to understand it. Or f***, just think about it. I'll face whatever comes my way ... — John O'Callaghan

the old anti-'commercial' tendencies mocked throughout this book have been bulked up into a worldview by the runaway growth of what I call semipopular music." (Oh yeah, "semipopular music." Er, "music more popular in form than in market share." At least when it starts out. Under the rubric "alternative," now also an established image-making strategy that informs many of the "brands" ambitious young musicians concoct for themselves. — Robert Christgau

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible. — Rabindranath Tagore

We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,
at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird. — Henry David Thoreau

I think when you're a fan of music - at least the way I've been a fan to artists that have really touched me - you're with them for the long haul. They might do things that you don't understand or agree with, but I think I've always tried to hold my judgment and give them the space to do what they need to do. — Matisyahu

I loathe rock stars. I am a music nerd, a fan, a follower ... just like any fan of music might be. And although I have blood-relatives, a lot of times I feel closer to my audience than my true family, because at least my fans get what I'm doing, to a certain extent, whereas my family does not. — Phil Anselmo

It dawned on me at some point that our music makes certain people happy - I never thought we'd have that effect and it's really gratifying and humbling. My least favorite is the exhaustion that comes with traveling a lot, the touring related exhaustion. And the crazy thing is that we've all been doing this for years and your body never gets used to it - you always feel messed up. But it's a good problem to have. — David Macklovitch

I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing. — Jorma Kaukonen

And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to music, riding my bicycle, I catch myself feeling, in a way that's as old as I am but suddenly seems unfamiliar, light. I have felt so heavy for so long. At first I felt odd- as if I shouldn't be feeling this lightness, that familiar little catch of pleasure in the heart which is inexplicable, though a lovely passage of notes or the splendidly turned petal of a tulip has triggered it. It's my buoyancy, part of what keeps me alive: happy, suddenly with the concomitant experience of a sonata and the motion of the shadows of leaves. I have the desire to be filled with sunlight, to soak my skin in as much of it as I can drink up, after the long interior darkness of this past season, the indoor vigil, in this harshest and darkest of winters, outside and in. — Mark Doty

My father thought that if I was to go into the army, at the least I would have a reliable paycheck at the end of each month with which to feed my family. Music is less assured. One could say more dangerous! — Vieux Farka Toure

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary. — Bonnie Raitt

At least Lars was curious about the appeal of jazz to black folk; for most observers, such ponderation is akin to contemplating why gorillas like bananas. The attractiveness of jazz to the nonblack is well documented in publicly funded documentaries where experts speak of jazz in the past tense. They look authoritatively into the camera and ingratiate themselves with the Man by saying things like, "White people were hearing something in jazz that says something deeply about their experience. I'm not sure that it would have been this way if we were not a country of immigrants ... so many people felt kind of displaced ... I think that was part of its amazing appeal, was how it spoke to feeling out of sort and out of joint and maladjusted."
What hogwash. Does my fondness for classical music make me well adjusted? Besides, people who are really fucked up don't turn to jazz; they turn to heroin, opium, whiskey, and Vonnegut. — Paul Beatty

Kids who are least impressive in my class are the ones who only listen to one kind of music. They only listen to country or only to rap or to gospel or anything. It's a sad thing. I try really hard to get them to go out and listen to things. It's amazing what you learn ... I'm still trying to learn. It's not like I'm going to be a calypso singer. That's not going to happen, but I'm sure there's something in that, that I can learn from and apply to my own work. — Andy Wilkinson

Being a working mother is not easy, but I think it helps you choose what's important in your life. If I think about starting a new project
whether it be music, a movie or a fragrance
I always stop and think: Is this something I feel really passionate about? That way, if I'm not at home at least it's for something I really love, and my son can look up to that. — Christina Aguilera

I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers. — Pat Conroy

Though many strive to hide their human libidinousness from themselves and each other, being a force of nature, it breaks through. Lots of uptight, proper Americans were scandalized by the way Elvis moved his hips when he sang "rock and roll." But how many realized what the phrase rock and roll meant? Cultural historian Michael Ventura, investigating the roots of African-American music, found that rock 'n' roll was a term that originated in the juke joints of the South. Long in use by the time Elvis appeared, Ventura explains the phrase "hadn't meant the name of a music, it meant 'to fuck.' 'Rock,' by itself, has pretty much meant that, in those circles, since the twenties at least." By the mid-1950s, when the phrase was becoming widely used in mainstream culture, Ventura says the disc jockeys "either didn't know what they were saying or were too sly to admit what they knew. — Christopher Ryan

Pop is actually my least favorite kind of music, because it lacks real depth. — Christina Aguilera

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense ... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. — Alan Dean Foster

I always use the Jeff Beck model. Jeff Beck is just a genius, and he keeps getting better ... If there's anybody in your field you want to aspire to be like, it is a guy who does what he wants to do. Every record at least he comes out with one thing that makes everybodys' jaw drop ... I would hope that Jimi Hendrix would have done that, although, man, the odds are against him because he did so much in such a short amount of time ... — Joe Satriani

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer

At least we have the record, Henry thought. A reminder of a place where people didn't seem to care what you looked like, where you were born, or where your family was from. When the music played, it didn't seem to make one lick of difference if your last was Abernathy or Anjoy, Kung or Kobayashi. — Jamie Ford

Apartment windows are cracked open to the cold to balance overzealous radiators, and there's comfort in the sounds drifting out. Each window Amelia passes hints at the warmth inside: people talking, people laughing, kitchen sounds, the steady pulse of music. Now salsa, now reggae. Now opera, now rock. voices in English, in Spanish in Korean, in junkie gibberish. And she's a part of it, at least as long as the sounds of all those lives wash over her. — Cari Luna

Maybe a good goal would be to just at least always try to create something good. Like something that is connected to love in some way. Like the [musical] equivalent of ... you can make a decision to be kind. You can make a decision to greet people kindly and make jokes with people and connect. — Joanna Newsom

It's the least I can do, to come back with some strong music. — Mystikal

Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding. — Janet Fitch

We live in an age of music for people who don't like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren't that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music's annoying, or at the very least they don't need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records. — T Bone Burnett

While Lou loved the raucous music, loud voices, and chaotic movement of a dinner rush, the calm of prep-work soothed her soul and gave her time to think. Some people did downward dog, some burned incense in front of a Buddha statue, some prayed the rosary; Lou chopped the vegetables into tiny squares, filleted fish, and reduced veal stock. Her meditation smelled better, and even if she didn't find a solution, at least she got to eat. — Amy E. Reichert

At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. — Dave Barry

It's really helped a ton in the sense that we get to reach people who don't normally know our music. At least once a night at a show someone will come up to the merch table after the show and say they've never heard of me but they saw me on Troubadour, TX, and it reminds me that I'm not Elvis and anything I can do to get my name out there is beneficial in every way. — Cody Johnson

And we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony. — George Eliot

I think meaning is something that's really unnecessary in music, at least for me. — Tim Rutili

Music,' she said, in a languorous and dreamlike manner. 'Music is a betrayer of secrets; it is more treacherous even than dreams, which at least have the virtue of being private. — Rachel Cusk

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. — Samuel Johnson

For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic. — Alexander McCall Smith

If the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art that is emotionally neutral? and, simultaneously, what in ourselves might we be destroying or at least keeping down? — Lester Bangs

Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby bouncing up and down in the crib in time to some music? When you think of it, some of that baby's first messages from his or her parents may have been lullabies, or at least the music of their speaking voices. All of us have had the experience of hearing a tune from childhood and having that melody evoke a memory or a feeling. The music we hear early on tends to stay with us all our lives. — Fred Rogers