Should A Song Be In Quotes & Sayings

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread. — Noah Lukeman

Lundin says, "Denniz was an arrangement genius." He adds, "like Steve Jobs, he knew what to take out. 'You can get rid of that, that. Keep it simple.' " As Denniz put it, "A great pop song should be interesting, in some way. That means that certain people will hate it immediately and certain people will love it, but only as long as it isn't boring and meaningless. Then it's not a pop song any longer; then it's something else. It's just music. — John Seabrook

In every song there should be a beauty spoken which tells a different story to each person who hears it. — E.D. Phillips

There's just a lot of people that hold on to what country means to them. I love fiddle, I love steel, but I don't think it should be a rule that it has to be used in every song. I think that's not what defines or makes country music. — Eric Church

Her haunting me. The way a song stays in your head. The way you think life should be. How anything holds your
attention. How your past goes with you into every day of your future. — Chuck Palahniuk

He walked over to the piano and lifted the cover revealing black and white keys that my fingers knew all too well. "Play for me?"
I looked at the piano hesitantly and I felt the passion start to grow back inside of me. My fingers itched to play and suddenly my body was moving towards the piano and I sat down, my posture back to where it should be, my fingers hovering over the keys ready to play a song that I hadn't heard in years.
I closed my eyes and slowly breathed in and out. And then my fingers flew across the keys, the music filling the room. The music moved me both emotionally and physically as I rocked my body to the music, putting all of me into the song. The music took me to a different place than where I was here and now. This is the melody I always seem to come back to, always finding myself lost in the notes. The song is a part of me as it tells a story. A story about loss and recovery. — Alexandria Rhodes

Too many people focus on writing what they think they should write, what should be in a song, what radio would want. — Kacey Musgraves

She couldn't take her eyes from the dancing flame. No, this was so wrong. Candles should be used for meditation ... for romance. Or on a birthday cake at least.
So where was the cake? The present? The song? As he stepped closer to her - as the damned flame got way too close - she started singing. "Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me ... " Marcus paused, looking at her in disbelief. See. I knew he didn't have a sense of humor. "Happy birthday, dear Gabi" - she lifted her head and blew out the candle - "happy birthday to me. — Cherise Sinclair

Last night I heard a robin singing in the rain,
And the raindrop's patter made a sweet refrain,
Making all the sweeter the music of the strain.
So, I thought, when trouble comes, as trouble will,
Why should I stop singing? Just beyond the hill
It may be that sunshine floods the green world still.
He who faces the trouble with a heart of cheer
Makes the burden lighter. If there falls a tear,
Sweeter is the cadence in the song we hear.
I have learned your lesson, bird with dappled wing,
Listening to your music with its lilt of spring
When the storm-cloud darkens, then's the TIME to sing. — Eben E. Rexford

Like your marriage, everything in the universe is trying to find its orbit. In the midst of this constant readjustment, both partners should be able to go to bed knowing that neither one is going to abandon a wounded, or struggling marriage. There is a comforting reassurance being with someone who keeps their promise.
pg iv — Michael Ben Zehabe

I'm a panicked karaoke participant because I am always searching for a song in the moment. I don't have my go to song. I will be driving along and I will be like, "That should be my karaoke song!" and then I forget what song it is. — Will Ferrell

I think it's absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one's been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn't write about, but that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation. — Richard Thompson

[Best original song nomination in 2016] should be Wiz Khalifa for "See You Again," but this is an amazing song and it's easily the biggest song out of any of the songs nominated. It was a huge hit. And really, I'm just happy for Weeknd as a person. — Bun B.

I realized then how odd it must seem to them to be summoned by a woman. Roman women were at home quietly minding their business or else doing what wives were known to do in joke and song: boss, nag, forbid. As a foreign queen I was the only woman who was their equal and had the power to summon them, question them, and advise them on matters other than domestic details. I thought that a pity; there should be others. — Margaret George

Sketching is the breath of art: it is the most refreshing of all the more impulsive forms of creative self-expression and, as such, it should be as free, and happy, as a song in the bath. — Mervyn Levy

The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love. The idea of God that humans have in their being is the wonder of all wonders. They have felt in the depths of their lives that what appears as imperfect is the manifestation of the perfect; just as a person who has an ear for music realized the perfection of a song, while in fact he or she is only listening to a succession of notes. — Victor Gollancz

I sought to reform minstrelsy among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order ... Some of my songs should be performed in a pathetic, not a comic style. — Stephen Foster

Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams ... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have' ... countless books unwritten ... countless songs unsung ... I want to live my life in such a way that when my body is laid to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived, a song well sung, a book well written, opportunities well explored, and a love well expressed. — Steve Maraboli

I know what I want to hear. I want to hear the "Believe it or Not" song. I want to play that shit loud. Really belt out the "Should have been somebody eeeeeelse" part, with a little bit of Zack de la Rocha venom. That would be pretty awesome right about now.

But the other part of me, the part that wanted to be cool, knew that it was a much better idea to say, "Let's play the fucking Misfits." Because that's what you say to the cool guy in the combat boots who wants to smoke in your house. Because he's going to snarl-smile at you and say, "Fuck yeah!" And you're feel cool by association.

"Let's play the fucking Misfits," I said.

John snarl-smiled and saluted me with rock horns. "Fuck yeah."

Told you. — Eric Spitznagel

There's hidden sweeteness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. — Rumi

If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced. — Ryan Tedder

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music. — Patrick Carney

Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving. — Sam Hunt

I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street. — Talib Kweli

The familiar song of a night-singing nightingale rises from somewhere in the garden. A nightingale that in this season of cold should not be in the garden, a nightingale that in a thousand verses of Iranian poetry, in the hours of darkness, for the love of a red rose and in sorrow of its separation from it, has forever sung and will forever sing. — Shahriar Mandanipour

There's only one proper way a song should go, but you've got to be patient enough to let them come together time wise. Sometimes it's lightning in a bottle and you got the song. But oftentimes it shows up. — Ben Harper

My love for you is immeasurable
My respect for you immense
You're ageless, timeless, lace and fineness
You're beauty and elegance
You're a rhapsody, a comedy
You're a symphony and a play
You're every love song ever written
But honey what do you see in me?
You're in my heart, you're in my soul
You'll be my breath should I grow old
You are my lover, you're my best friend
You're in my soul — Rod Stewart

Karlheinz Stockhausen to journalist: "I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Song of the Youth," which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it [was] varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations."

Aphex Twin to journalist: "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: 'Didgeridoo,' then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to". — Karlheinz Stockhausen

I think people sometimes confuse 'catchy' with something that should automatically be a hit in today's world. I mean, obviously we write a lot of stuff that's catchy, that sticks in your head. But that doesn't necessarily mean that middle-school kids are going to want to listen to a song about a lawyer or a Subaru or whatever. — Adam Schlesinger

Any artist, when he goes in to record, should have the feeling that any song he records can be a hit. This may sound egotistical, but it makes sense. — Ray Charles

The DJ opens his eyes and sees what he's done. By all rights, he should switch the song. But it's a long-distance dedication to the boy he loves down in Texas. He dials up the boy right now and holds his phone into the air.
Not all songs need to be for dancing. There will always be the next song, to draw the dancers back. — David Levithan

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme. — William Shakespeare

I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song - a gold box with a silver pin. Some day I should be grown up, and I should dig up the box and turn the pin. — Mary Butts

I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs." — Billy Joel

In the third place he comes on to the chiefe Organ, that is, the instrument wherewith they should sing. It is not with the Organs of the Papists, no not with thy tongue; but it is with the heart, and with the affection of a well-ruled heart. Therefore as a fiddler, or any that playes on an Instrument tempers his Instrument, that a sweete harmonie may be heard of it: Even so before thou sing, temper thou thy heart; and let thy song rise, not from thy throte, but from the depth of thine heart, that is from thine affections set upon God. — Robert Rollock

What is your favorite song? The Silent Song. I could sing it for you, but you wouldn't be able to hear it. Only alpacas and very rare mice have the ability to hear The Silent Song. Do you have any children? rufus, joseephus, artie choke, woody bush, pat may wiener, meowy, boopsie and bob. What's your favorite movie? It's a tie between "The Anal girls of tobacco road: vagina slimes" and "sex starved fuck sluts #22: stinky white women." The well-developed plot and range of emotions portrayed in vagina slimes far outweighs that of stinky white women, but at the same time, the complexity in the cinematic quality of stinky white women should not be overlooked. — Tara Sivec

The music is meant to be provocative - which doesn't mean it's necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it's dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head. You can enjoy a song that knocks in the club or has witty punch lines the first time you hear it. But great rap retains mystery. It leaves shit rattling around in your head that won't make sense till the fifth or sixth time through. It challenges you. — Jay-Z

I'm sorry. I was just thinking of that stupid song, 'Seasons in the Sun.' You know, 'we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.' Good grief, I should be a mental patient. (Cassandra)
You have more strength than any warrior I have known. Don't ever apologize to me again for those few times when you show your fear to me, Cassandra. (Wulf) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Each time someone laughed, each time Annie elbowed me or Rafael prodded me or Aubrey asked me, wheedling slightly, to take his side in an argument, I had this feeling of floating on air, miles and miles above the clouds. Each laugh was like a song I'd always wanted to learn without ever realizing I didn't already know it. Each laugh was a new experience on its own, and yet a familiar one, and I felt that I should be thanking someone for it, but I didn't know who. — Rose Christo

Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, chinese operas,jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world. — Salman Rushdie

I'm kind of a purist and I actually just want to be a good player, with that said though ... I probably should get a little more involved in that as that's what people are doing and making great songs out of their computer so it's kind of like, at what point does purist become arrogance? — The Rocket Summer

Really, the F word in a song - it should be the least of the worries of parents these days. — Enrique Iglesias

I wrote 'Always Love' in 10 minutes. It's a very positive song, more positive than I am in reality, but I was feeling good for three and a half minutes. And every time we play a show I think, 'Well I should probably be that positive,' but I'm not. — Matthew Caws

When the human voice is reduced to being no longer a song, a word, or a cry, but the articulation of the unnamable itself, it is natural that there should be no other sound than the grinding of ice in the polar regions, the light, intermittent crackling of silk in the highest zones of the atmosphere, at the moment when the aurora borealis unfurls its strange, cold spangles. Majesty does not tolerate other eyes than these hard crystals — Michel Leiris

In fact, you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self
the humor, the song, the behind-the-back pass
had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger. — Barack Obama

Have you ever been in love?"
"Colin. For the love of God."
"I have," he said bluntly. "And when you lose love, it tears a hole out of you. The pain can be gruesome. I thought I lost Madeline once, and I swear for a few days I thought I might never be whole again."
"Perhaps you should write a poem about it. Add another verse to your song. — Julie Anne Long

Then this must be my answer: We know that the attributes of God are infinite and it has always seemed strange to me that men have never given Him credit for common sense. It is hard to believe that He would have created so beautiful a world if He had not decided men to enjoy it. Would He have given the stars their glory, the birds their sweet song, and the flowers, their fragrance if He had not wished us to delight in them? I shave sinned before men and men have condemned me. God made me a man with passions of a man, and did He give them to me only that I should suppress them? He gave me my adventurous spirit and my love of life. I have a humble hope that when I am face to face with my Maker He will condone my imperfections and I shall find mercy in His sight. — W. Somerset Maugham

It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret ... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead ... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. — Will Durant

The season was waning fast
Our nights were growing cold at last
I took her to bed with silk and song,
'Lay still, my love, I won't be long;
I must prepare my body for passion.'
'O, your body you give, but all else you ration.'
'It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:
A bleeding nymph to leave me serene ...
I have dreams of a trembling wench.'
'You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.'
'Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;
As our longing for love can never be cured.
Our want is our way and our way is our will,
We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.'
'If night is your love, then in dreams you'll fulfill ...
This love, our love, that no one can kill.'
Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,
Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill. — Roman Payne

Well, I can answer that," Jackal said breezily, and bared his fangs in a lethal grin. "He can die. Painfully. After I rip his other arm from the socket and shove it so far down his poetry-spouting piehole that he chokes on it. What I don't understand is why we're standing up here yapping away when we should be down there kicking in his door. So, come on, team." Jackal's gaze was mocking but dangerous. "Let's go kill ourselves a psychopath. — Julie Kagawa

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying. — Craig Finn

Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence." The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. — Charlotte Bronte

Evelyn was twenty-six, and for the first time in her life, she was seen. Recognized. It wasn't that heads were turning--she wouldn't ask that much--but just for a moment, one man would hold her gaze a little longer than he should. Or a woman's eyes would flick over her dress with jealousy. She could now be a missed connection on Craigslist, a fragment in a song lyric, the inspiration for a girl in a musical. — Stephanie Clifford

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! — Jeffrey Lewis

People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy." — Robert Wyatt

What good I thought I could do, all alone, against thousands of years of mistrust and the power of a Demonlord, I cannot now imagine: but such are the dreams of youth, too gloriously stupid to realise what cannot be done.
And without those dreams, how should we ever accomplish the impossible? — Elizabeth Kerner

I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song." — Solange Knowles

What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life ... I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around ... Obviously, whenever you're going through something that's the best time to create, if you're going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they're writing good songs and take it a little too seriously. — Kevin Drew

Mortality
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? — William Knox

It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear any mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages. — Jack London

I think [game music] is something that should last with the player. It's interesting because it can't just be some random music, but something that can make its way into the player's heart. In that sense, this not only applies to game music, but I feel very strongly about composing songs that will leave a lasting impressionWhat I must not forget is that it must be entertaining to those who are listening. I don't think there's much else to it, to be honest. I don't do anything too audacious, so as long as the listeners like it, or feel that it's a really great song, then I've done my job. — Yasunori Mitsuda

I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old. When I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, 'Son, you should write a song about your brother.' — Blake Shelton

Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts. — Desmond Dekker

In many ways, a song-writing partnership is like a marriage. Apart from just liking each other, a lyricist and a composer should be able to spend long periods of time together - around the clock if need be - without getting on each other's nerves. Their goals, outlooks, and basic philosophies should be similar. — Richard Rodgers

I can destroy a dance floor. I think life should be a musical. I always hate it when people watch a musical and they go, 'Oh, it's so unrealistic, no one just breaks into song in the middle of their day.' Yeah, they do- if they're me. — Zachary Levi

I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song. — John Prine

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If every element of the song doesn't come within the first hour of writing, then you're never going to get it - if that makes sense. It's kind of like you need to be in a mental state where everything is so reactionary that you don't double-think anything, and so if it's not immediate then it's probably not going to happen at all, and you should probably toss the song. — Zach Condon

Thus, on the one hand, Spenser's thought is steeped in sensuous detail, so that for him there is no really abstract thinking; men, he thinks, 'should be satisfied with the use of these days, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to commune sense' ( Prefatory Letter). But on the other hand the details of the physical universe become translucent from the pulsing light of varied human experience which is seen behind it. His 'haunt and the main region of (his) song' is the inner life of man and it is described in the symbolism of human figures clothed in raiment iridescent with innumerable associations. His art is a development of the mediaeval. — Janet Spens

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. — Edgar Allan Poe

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. — Pablo Picasso

I began playing with the cries, a little in the same way as I had played with the song, on, back, on, back, if that may be called playing. As long as I kept walking I didn't hear them, because of the footsteps. But as soon as I halted again I heard them again, a little fainter each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should cease. For years I thought they would cease. Now I don't think so any more. I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don't. — Samuel Beckett

I think that's such a beautiful sentiment. Love should only last as long as a very expensive and impractical bikini that looks stunning, but dissolves in the sea within days. So many pop songs tell of this terrible, tiresome love that they want to last forever. But that just makes me think of long-life milk, acrid and fake. Love should be like a movie trailer. Even if the film's a stinker, you get the best laughs and the biggest explosions in the space of two minutes. — Emma Forrest

Here I am starting a franchise and I'm gonna be 65 years old. I should've started this in 1978 ... I wrote like 300 songs and I'm gonna have to re-learn some of them! — Billy Joel

This is my gift to you, this story that is also a song, these words that are a part of Fokir. Such flaws as there are in my rendition of it I do not regret, for perhaps they will prevent me from fading from sight, as a good translator should. For once, I shall be glad if my imperfections render me visible. — Amitav Ghosh