That One Song Quotes & Sayings

That's when Sam grabbed my hand. "I love this song!" She led me to the dance floor. And she started dancing. And I started dancing. It was a fast song, so I wasn't very good, but she didn't seem to mind. We were just dancing, and that was enough. The song ended, and then a slow one came on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, she took my hands and pulled me in to dance slow. I don't know how to dance slow very well either, but I do know how to sway. Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka. "I looked for you in the parking lot today." I hoped mine still smelled like toothpaste. "I was looking for you, too." Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time. — Stephen Chbosky

Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns; it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies, they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm, the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air. I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song, for I know well that only words, that words alone, like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death. — Nikos Kazantzakis

I lay my tasks down one by one; I sit in the silence of twilight grace. Out of the shadows, deep and dun, Steals, like a star, my Baby's face ... I will take up my work once more, As if I had never laid it down. Who will dream that I ever wore, In triumph, motherhood's sacred crown? ... Nevertheless, the way is long, And tears leap up in the light of the sun. I'd give my world for a cradle-song, And a kiss from Baby?only one. — Mary C. Ames

I like albums that knit together, where the songs relate to one another and intertwine. — Scott Hutchison

That night, it wasn't Dobie Gray," I whispered. "It was this song. It was Ella Mae singing this to me when I thought you weren't all I knew you to be, which is all the words to this song. Twenty-nine years, I held out for this. Then, half an hour later, you proved every one of these words true and every moment since then, you kept doing it. I'll take you thinking I'm your angel but you need to know you're my hero. Twenty-nine, honey, I held out for this. Twenty-nine years, I held out for you. — Kristen Ashley

I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories , on the one hand , we can sugercoat it. Nothing is too messed up that can't be fixed with a Peter Gabriel song, I like this version as much as the next girl does. It's just not the truth — John Green

Okay, my life isn't that romantic! No one has ever sung to me or wrote a song about me. But, I have to say that it's pretty much the most romantic thing ever. So, if that were ever to really happen to me, I would be really happy about it. — Chloe Bridges

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus's eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus's breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one. — Cassandra Clare

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own. — Miri Ben-Ari

But the real and actual 'riggedness' of the Eurovision lies in the vision it presents to us as to what 'Culture' is supposed to be: a monotone, cheap, cloned industrialized song with some glamour attached. The formula is always the same: 24 cloned songs, like computer automated, and 2 'crazy' ones so it seems that all this clonedness is actually supported by creativity. But in this image of 'craziness' there is the same formula: cloned, boring songs with some carnavalesque stuff attached. The factual dynamics of the event are in fact fascist: its almost purely Riefenstahl, but the Chinese mass production version of it. It shows us one thing and one thing only: Countries are an illusion, they are all the same. There are no countries. — Martijn Benders

People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness. — Rajneesh

I care so much about making things that are useful for people to have and listen to, but I don't care so much that I won't do whatever the hell I want. It's just one of those things. — Regina Spektor

If you are not happy with the song, don't sing it. Simple as that - no-one forces you to do it. — Rebecca Ferguson

'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song. — The Weeknd

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I didn't know yet how wanting to die could be a bloodsong in your body that lives with you your whole life. I didn't know then how deeply my mother's song had swum into my sister and into me. I didn't know that something like wanting to die could take form in one daughter as the ability to quietly surrender, and in the other as the ability to drive into death head-on. I didn't know we were our mother's daughters after all. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Toddlers were running the place like some miniature version of Lord of the Flies, complete with weapons made from blocks and tinker toys. One of them came at me, charging my knees and the pink pod that held my precious baby. I screamed and made a run for the front door, flip-flops sticking to squelchy dried puddles of juice. I let out a relieved sigh when we were outside breathing fresh air. The near-deafening roar of the highway was a lark song compared to the screeching we'd just escaped. — Piper Vaughn

You know, like, there's songs like "Valerie" and "Bang Bang Bang" that I was so proud of. And, you know, the level of success that they had - if they were little cult hits meant that, you know, I could sellout Webster Hall or Williamsburg Musical Hall or the El Rey theater in LA. Like, that was having made it to me. So the thought of having a number one song in my own career, like, never even registered. — Mark Ronson

People can be happy in only one way, and that is if they are authentically themselves. Then the springs of happiness start flowing, they become more alive, they become a joy to see, a joy to be with; they are a song, they are a dance. — Rajneesh

Doesn't Eva have warm and eager flesh?"

"Of course. But the sweet thrill wanes somewhat when eagerness is so easily elicited. The succulent bliss of the moment is lost." Johnny could've written a whole song around that one sentence, so I committed it to memory. — Linda Robertson

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

So many people had tried for Blake, but so many had failed. All it takes is one to be the glue. It's going to be me. Livia moved quietly to straddle him. She put her hands on his scruffy cheeks. "I know all that you are. You almost don't belong here, your soul's so pure." Livia put a hand on his chest. "You're perfect to me. You're chivalrous to me. I adore your manners. You can't disappoint me. It's not possible." Livia leaned in and kissed him sweetly. See? See how much I can fix?
Blake became absorbed by her hair, grabbing handfuls of it. He pulled her to his chest, combing it out with his fingers as he hummed a soothing song in her ear. The liquid velvet of his voice lifted her into dreams. — Debra Anastasia

If Madison Avenue advertising executives were to pick a song that would best represent America, the last one they would choose is 'The Star Spangled Banner.' — Ronald Kessler

Worship is not music. We can certainly worship Him without musicians and without a song. And by the way, God does not actually seek worship. The Word tells us that He seeks worshippers. He's not looking for those who make the most beautiful music. He's looking for those who worship in spirit ... and in truth. Music is only one of the ways that he has ordained for us to express our worship. Yet too many worship leaders today spend more time honing their craft and planning / rehearsing their worship sets, than they spend on their face, alone in worship. — Steven Rice

Lennon's was one of the first voices I emulated when I began to sing. When we held tryouts in my pal's dad's living room for the singer in our band, I sang a Beatles song that Lennon sang. There is something about the timbre of his voice, something that it conveys, that still gets to me. The quality and the poetry of his lyrics. The wry sense of humor. And the boyishness, in the beginning. There are a great many things that touch me about him ... Lennon was, to put it in his own words, a 'working-class hero.' — Don Henley

The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. "Nothing my Father and I have made is ever wasted," he said quietly, "and the little wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous little song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return. — Hannah Hurnard

There is a string attached to Maia Sharp's voice. And when she sings, you find that the other
end is attached to your gut. Her voice is lush and sensual and the emotions she articulates
resonate with the small feelings we have that sometimes are hard to face..there is an edge to
her songs, but also a softness ... she is lyrical and conversational at the same time. Her CD was
the only one in my machine for a month. Her work inspires me to dig deeper. — Kathy Mattea

Some pasts exist as a fog that rolls in and out of the present, formed not by air that condenses into mist but memories that condense into tiny doors that open to forgotten moments. Maybe you glance at a stranger on a crowded street who reminds you of a childhood friend or hear a song that was popular the first summer you fell in love, and in the space of that single beat of time you are flung backward to a who or when long past. And yet it is only for that one beat. Those tiny doors never remain open for long for most of us. They ensure our former times are kept as relics, and the dust upon them is wiped clean only occasionally — Billy Coffey

I will have a song that I'm in love with for a couple of months and then I'll go to something else. That's just constantly changing. And sometimes I will go back to old one that I haven't heard for a long time. — Ray Brown

Well, the moral of the story, The moral of this song, Is simply that one should never be Where one does not belong. So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin', Help him with his load, And don't go mistaking Paradise For that home across the road. — Bob Dylan

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.' — Chuck Palahniuk

One girl, actually, in the UK - it was a really small show in Wales - a girl came up to me and said that because of one of my songs she was still alive. She'd decided not to commit suicide. It was a really emotional moment. — Lights

Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again. — Helen Steiner Rice

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ... ' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ... — David Mitchell

One of my favorite songs I've ever done is "Who Says," and I was 17 when I recorded that song. It was just so exactly what I felt, during that time. That's when I knew how powerful music is. — Selena Gomez

I remember writing a song when I was about 15. This is the one I can remember. I know I'd been writing poetry for a long time, since I was about eight, but I remember my first one that I put to chords. I was really trying to be like the psychedelic era Beatles, I was obsessed. All I could think about was Beatles and Hendrix. So I tried to write a psychedelic song, and it was the worst. I couldn't even ... If I read it now - I still have the book somewhere - it makes me cringe out loud. It was just about psychedelic stuff. — Ladyhawke

Because she knew from experience that what came next was something straight out of a Pitbull featuring Ke$ha song. She was going down. Although, as far as she could figure, no one was yelling, "Timber! — Julie Ann Walker

This one's for Aura.
You all know who that is by now. The only girl I've ever loved. I wrote her a song, but she's the only one who's ever heard it, or ever will. — Jeri Smith-Ready

She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled - until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.
Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.
They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.
And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart. — Sarah J. Maas

The country singers understand. It's always that one song that gets you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you. Country singers are always
twanging about that number on the jukebox they can't stand to hear you play, the one with the memories. — Rob Sheffield

Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn't suit the moment. — Lisa Wingate

Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming ... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it. — William Bell

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that ... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me". — Ben E. King

I used to think that one day I'd be able to resolve the different drives I have in different directions, the tensions between the different people I am. Now I realize that is who I am. I do feel I'm getting closer to the song in my head. I wasn't looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me. — Edward De Bono

I could see us sitting at the old piano, while he tried to explain how music worked. I could see the Iron glamour in the notes, the strict lines and rigid rules that made up the score, but the music itself was a vortex of song and pure, swirling emotion. They weren't separate entities, creative magic and Iron glamour. They were one; cold logic and wild emotion, merged together to create something truly beautiful. — Julie Kagawa

Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart. — Leigh Bardugo

For a heart without love is a song with no words And a tune to which no one is listening So your heart must give love and you'll find that You shine like rain on the leaves you'll be glistening. — Andy Partridge

Because life is a symphony it must have its C Minor. Days there be when we hear only a discord of sharps and flats, and we wonder whether harmony will ever be restored. On other days we hear only an ominous, deep strain which seems to say that hope is fled. But why this chill despair? Symphonies are a blending of many tones, high and low, over and under, major and minor. One day cannot make a life a whole any more than shadows can make a picture or minor notes a symphony. We need to hear life's song, not as the discord of a single day, but as the completed harmony of all the years. Then will today's sorrow and tomorrow's disappointment ring forth in major key as glorious melody. — W. Waldemar W. Argow

I remember the first time I saw you. Your hair was in two braids instead of one. I remember when you sang in the music assembly and the teacher said "who knows the valley song?" and your hand shot straight up. After that, I watched you going home everyday. Everyday — Suzanne Collins

I had been told by a number of people that if you get half of what you want on your first album, you're doing really well. Pretty much every single thing they had was something that I liked. There were maybe one or two songs I didn't like, and they were taken off the album quickly. — Clay Aiken

The moment I fell, my wings wilted like roses left too long in the vase. The misery of the bare back is to live after flight, to be the low that will never again rise. "To live on land is to live in a dimming station, but to fly above, everything sparkles, everything is endlessly crystal. Even the dry dirt improves to jewel when you can be the wings over it. "To be removed from flight is to be removed from the comet lines, the star-soaked song. How can I go on from that? How can I be something of value when I've lost my most valuable me? Land is my forever now, my thoroughly ended heaven. No sky will have me, no God either. "I am the warning to all little children before bedtime. Say your prayers, be done with sin, lest you become the devil, the one too sunk, no save will have him." Dad — Tiffany McDaniel

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it. — Bruno Mars

Then with Lucy [Hale], her little thing that I kind of learned from her is her country music because she's obsessed with country and at the beginning, I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I was listening to some songs that she plays in the hair and makeup room and she's also so funny, too. She does these character impersonations and they're just so funny. Made up characters of course, but she can switch into someone else so fast. I'm always laughing at Lucy and she's like a little Polly Pocket, you know? The tiny one. — Shay Mitchell

Shall I tell you the secret of true love? her father once asked her. A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why? Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother's porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums. That's Mama! Inej had cried. Yes, Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same color, and she claims that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer. Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart. That — Leigh Bardugo

Or consider "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category - "bath rock" - to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station. — Charles Duhigg

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. — Wynton Marsalis

There are songs and melody that make you really happy. And there are spiritual gifts that you have - giving these gifts away sometimes gives you that feeling of inspiration. These seconds of awareness make you realize that any second can be your favorite one, and it really is up to you. — Russell Simmons

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

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever. — Kevin Smith

It's a double-headed coin, because technology is a convenience but it's stifled our attention spans. At one time, albums had songs that were like ten minutes long, with different variations and chord progressions and changes. — Cee Lo Green

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with? Probably the one that I haven't hung most with recently. — Eddie Van Halen

For what St. Augustine said is true, that one can sing nothing worthy of God save what one has received from Him. Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation. Wherefore, Chrysostom exhorts men, women, and children alike to get used to singing them, so as through this act of meditation to become as one with the choir of angels. — William Romaine

As a songwriter, I try not to be sloppy; same with the music. You can be very lean, very efficient, so you're not wasting a lot of time getting' to the point. You're saying it with as pure a word or phrase as you can. That's the part that was craft. You refine and refine and refine. Maybe that's why the songs still hang on, because they're very pure. For one thing, they're very short. "Bad Moon Rising" is like 2 minutes and 12 seconds. I would try to do everything as quickly and with as little extra as possible. It was a challenge. — John Fogerty

For the most part I felt nothing but scorn for an art form that required the pretense that it was natural for people to communicate with one another in rhymed song. — Joel Derfner

I think one of my highpoints was definitely well, everything started turning around on Barry Manilow week. I had so much fun on disco week, love disco music. I think I picked some songs that really worked for me and people really enjoyed them. I loved doing the Donna Summers song and she was the guest judge, and she was the guest judge and I felt honored. She said she loved the song and said I made it my own. — Diana DeGarmo

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

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. 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 and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. — Jack London

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. — Rob Sheffield

It has affected me very much in the last 10 years. I get it from my grandmother. She was very superstitious as well. I'm funny about numbers. It's become a phobia, so I have to watch it. It affects your day a lot. Before I go on stage, there are certain things I do that are semi-sort of Gypsy superstitious things, but I'm coping with them. It hasn't affected the music, thank God. If you got really bad, you'd say I'll pick that note instead of that one or sing this song before that. — Rory Gallagher

There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music. — Edward Hirsch

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

My songs, they have just the one chord, there's none of that fancy stuff you hear now, with lots of chords in one song. If I find another chord I leave it for another song. — Junior Kimbrough

Ford was humming something. it was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. if anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called "Mad About the Boy" over and over again. it would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the "About the Boy" bit. he was annoyed that nobody asked. — Douglas Adams

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. — Sigrid Undset

Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good; nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best. Cosmopolitanism offers a positive, patriotism a chorus of superlatives. Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant, and thus it insures what is, perhaps, the most essential of all earthly considerations, that nothing upon earth shall go without its due appreciation. Wherever there is a strangely-shaped mountain upon some lonely island, wherever there is a nameless kind of fruit growing in some obscure forest, patriotism insures that this shall not go into darkness without being remembered in a song. — G.K. Chesterton

I maintain that the best song is the one that ends up on the album. So whether I've written it or I haven't, I'm very comfortable with both. — Kylie Minogue

I got a great kick being in the Warner Bros. studios - that was really cool. I kept singing the 'Looney Tunes' theme song all day. I'm sure they haven't heard that one before. — Imelda May

There is so much information in one Hebrew word that translators are hard pressed to decide how much information should be cut. Since the first official translation (the Septuagint), Jewish translators advocated translating Hebrew (for outsiders) at the 'story' level.
pg viii — Michael Ben Zehabe

I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads. — Robert Palmer

See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing. — Taylor Swift

I wanted to talk about a lot of stuff that I've been through. Party-wise, it's taken me almost a decade to party enough to accumulate enough experiences that I could sing about and put in one song! — Brendon Urie

It's one of the craziest feelings to be on stage and know that you were sitting on your bedroom floor when that song came to be and now there's an arena full of people singing it. — Taylor Swift

I'm not sure anyone's ever experienced enlightenment, been born again, been called to repentance or decided to sell their belongings on account of a system. The voice, the tale, the image, the parable that gets through to you
that wins your heart
religiously is the one that makes it past your defenses. You've been won over, and you probably didn't see it coming. You've been enlisted into a drama, whether positively or negatively, and it shouldn't be controversial to note that it happens all the time. When you really think about it, there's one waiting around every corner. It's as near as the story, song or image you can't get out of your head. Religion happens when we get pulled in, moved, called out or compelled by something outside ourselves. It could be a car commercial, a lyric, a painting, a theatrical performance or the magnetic pull of an Apple store. The calls to worship are everywhere. — David Dark

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well
those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without. — Sarah Vowell

I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.
After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band. — Jenny Han

Even if we lose, what of it? We have made a song of freedom that will ring for a thousand years. No one will forget the Iceni or their red-haired queen. — Kate Quinn

though. Our Azadian friends are always rather nonplussed by our lack of a flag or a symbol, and the Culture rep here - you'll meet him tonight if he remembers to turn up - thought it was a pity there was no Culture anthem for bands to play when our people come here, so he whistled them the first song that came into his head, and they've been playing that at receptions and ceremonies for the last eight years." "I thought I recognized one of the tunes they played," Gurgeh admitted. The drone pushed his arms up and made some more adjustments. "Yes, but the first song that came into the guy's head was 'Lick Me Out'; have you heard the lyrics?" "Ah." Gurgeh grinned. "That song. Yes, that could be awkward." "Damn right. If they find out they'll probably declare war. Usual Contact snafu. — Iain M. Banks

I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another. — Billy Joel

Presently, I sense within me the slightest touch. The harmony of one chord lingers in my mind. It fuses, divides, searches
but for what? I open my eyes, position the fingers of my right hand on the buttons, and play out a series of permutations.
After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking.
I hold down the chord key and press the individual notes over and over again. The four notes seem to desire further notes, another chord. I strain to hear the chord that follows. The first four notes lead me to the next five, then to another chord and three more notes.
It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, I know. — Haruki Murakami

Been a long road to follow
Been there and one tomorrow
Without saying goodbye to yesterday
Are the memories I hold
Still valid?
Or have the tears deluded them..
Something somewhere out there
Is calling ...
Zero Gravity,
What's it like?
Is somebody there
Beyond these heavy aching feet?
Am I going home?
Will I hear someone?
Singin solace to the silent moon
Still the road keeps on telling me
To go on ...
Something is pulling me,
I feel the gravity
Of it all. — Maaya Sakamoto

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do. — David Byrne

Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let Serpent-Breath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. — Bernard Cornwell

With me, it's so eclectic and all over the map that no one knows what to expect, ... It may not be a great career move, but all these things - singing with the Funk Brothers and the Dead, singing a Dolly Parton song - is great. I'm welcome to all these different worlds, and that's been wonderful. — Joan Osborne

While the sun God will may your day, sing as a song in search of a voice that is silent, and the one God will make for your way. — Neil Diamond

Music began playing and a woman walked into the room and stood beside a small band. She was dressed in a red Irish costume that hung to her ankles and it was laced at the bodice with a black cord. After giving a nod to the band, she sang a few Irish songs. But one song seemed to stand out to Rick and he stopped eating and listened.
Sure a little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day and it nestled on the ocean in a spot so far away. When the angels found it, sure it looked so sweet and fair, they said, "Suppose we leave it for it looks so peaceful there."
So they sprinkled it with stardust just to make the shamrocks grow. 'Tis the only place you'll find them no matter where you go. Then they dotted it with silver to make its lakes so grand and when they had it finished, sure they called it Ireland. — Linda Weaver Clarke

If you're a songwriter, it's to perform your songs. For singers, it's just to get to sing somewhere. So while there may be a reluctance with all the things that go along with it, you got to choose, and this is one of my big opportunities to get back doing it. — Donnie Fritts

Technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed.

"A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, 'Do You Want to Date My Avatar?' ends with the lyrics 'And if you think I'm not the one, log off, log off, and we'll be done.' "

from a review of Alone Together by S. Turkle — Michiko Kakutani

While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known. — Octave Mirbeau