Quotes & Sayings About Water And Music

A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy. — Alan Watts

I've been surfing for a couple years, in the offseason in California and in Hawaii. I'm not very good, but it's just something that to be out there in the water, no cell phone, no music ... very few sports are as pure as that. — Troy Polamalu

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Chester's playing filled the station. Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out from the newsstand. And as people listened, a change came over their faces. Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city's rustling were rested by the cricket's melody. — George Selden

People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water. — David Bowie

Outside of the musical knowledge and exposure, Coltrane also apprenticed in the daily struggles of black musicians on the road. Segregation was a dominant factor in the majority of performance venues, as well as the surrounding geographical area. This determined where one could eat, use the bathroom, get gasoline, rent a hotel room, or even get a drink of water. And there was always the threat of racist police encounters. These cultural experiences were a part of his mentoring on the road and influenced the evolution of his conscious intent to use music as a force for goodness. — Leonard Brown

Closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I'd heard all my life, even more than "This Lullaby." All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again. — Sarah Dessen

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name. — Samuel R. Delany

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. — Elizabeth Bishop

Isn't that a little Old Testament for a nun?" "Ex-nun. And let me tell you, that serenity crap from The Sound of Music? Bullshit. Inside the cloister, the sisters are just as petty as people on the outside. There are some you love and some you hate. I did my share of spitting in the Holy Water font before another nun used it. It was totally worth the twenty rosaries I said for penance. — Jodi Picoult

In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, passive, motionless, but as a noble river that received its tributary waters and bearss them onward in larger and statelier volume. — Johannes Brahms

I saw an interview with Keith Richards. He said, 'How else could a kid in Dartford suddenly connect with and understand what Muddy Waters is singing?' There's a cultural difference, but there's just something in that music that subconsciously or internally you just understand; it just makes sense. — Paul Weller

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

Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house. — Jean Cocteau

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovelier things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; And from Time's woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. — Walter De La Mare

I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast. — Michael Weatherly

Lakes, carillonst,
Pools and bells,
Fifes and freshets,
Harps and wells;
Flutes and rivers,
Streams, bassoons,
Geysers, trumpets,
Chimes lagoons,
Hear the music,
Drink the water,
As we poor lambs
All go to slaughter.
I love you Eliot.
Good-bye. I cry.
Tears and violins.
Hearts and flowers,
Flowers and tears.
Rosewater, good-bye. — Kurt Vonnegut

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. — Mary Oliver

Gary tried not to notice how pale Savannah was as she fixed him a pot of coffee.Her satin skin was almost translucent.He was groggy from the trance-induced sleep and had a hard time waking up, even after a long shower. He had no idea where the change of clothes had come from,but they were lying on the end of the bed when he awakened.
Savannah was beautiful, moving through the house like flowing water, like music in the air.She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a pale turquoise shirt that clung to her curves and emphasized her narrow rib cage and small waist.Her long hair was pulled back in a thick braid that hung below her bottom.Gary tried to keep his eyes to himself.He hadn't seen any evidence of Gregori this evening,but he didn't want to take any chances.He had a feeling the one thing that could change that remote expression fast was to have another man ogling Savannah. — Christine Feehan

And she was funny and beautiful and she liked the same books, the same music, and she wanted everything I did, was in the exact same place I was in life, and just like that, add water and mix, instant love. — Jami Attenberg

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia. — William, Saroyan

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion. — Jean Rhys

And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music. — Bruno Schulz

The people in the city seem paper thin in the mist. They believe they are dancing to the music of their lives ... But I think, like the puppets, each of us is pulled upon invisible strings, until the night comes and we are put away. I shiver, and hurry from the square, as the darkness of the city closes over me like canal water or the grave. — Neil Gaiman

My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. — Fernando Pessoa

Q. Which is my favorite country?
A. The United States of America. Not because I'm chauvinistic or xenophobic, but because I believe that we alone have it all, even if not to perfection. The U.S. has the widest possible diversity of spectacular scenery and depth of natural resources; relatively clean air and water; a fascinatingly heterogeneous population living in relative harmony; safe streets; few deadly communicable diseases; a functioning democracy; a superlative Constitution; equal opportunity in most spheres of life; an increasing tolerance of different races, religions, and sexual preferences; equal justice under the law; a free and vibrant press; a world-class culture in books,films, theater, museums, dance, and popular music; the cuisines of every nation; an increasing attention to health and good diet; an abiding entrepreneurial spirit; and peace at home. — Albert Podell

Water and air He for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturn's string a touch more sore and grave.
The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow,
And short and long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd dance of all.
And this is Musick. — Abraham Cowley

Well, what do you think? Avanti?"
"Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments, and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement.
How good it is to pay this quintet, to play it, not to work at it - to play for our own joy, with no need to convey anything to anyone outside our ring of recreation, with no expectation of a future stage, of the too-immediate sop of applause. The quintet exists without us yet cannot exist without us. It sings to us, we sing into it, and somehow, through these little black and white insects clustering along five thin lines, the man who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed speaks into us across land and water and ten generations, and fills us here with sadness, here with amazed delight. — Vikram Seth

If God is Mother, then we need only gather together with people and adore her through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, ritual involving dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers, and beauty. — Paulo Coelho

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter. We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment. We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone. Our music is our alchemy. We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever ... — Saul Williams

And there, on that road, that very minute, he started to play - the most lonesome music that them priests ever in their lives heard. It brought water out o' their teeth, so it did. — Eddie Lenihan

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life. — Keith Richards

Without silence there is no music. Not simply because the faculty of hearing deteriorates from constant exposure to noise, but because silence is both the majestic frame and the stable solution for musical (and poetic) ideas. Silence is the soda water, the bracing ether, the bridge and mode of respect for receiving instructions from the angel. — Russell Sherman

She would pause sometimes to listen to the sound of the water as it lightly hit the walls of the fort. This too was music to her ears; it would calm her down and give her respite from the humdrum of life — Anamika Mishra

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them. — Charles Dickens

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial. — Chris Robinson

I'm just trying to unite the western crowd and the bluegrass crowd a little more ... I get to do that again on my new album, Tall Grass and Cool Water ... This is the first time I've had every song on an album be a Bluegrass and Cowboy Song at the same time. — Michael Martin Murphey

I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake's Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake's Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything
pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic
as long as you packaged it right. That meant you gave them a light show and faith healings and blow-down-the-walls gospel music with a whole row of American flags across the stage. He said what they liked best, though
what really got them to pissing all over themselves
was to be told it was other people going to hell and not them. He said people in Snake's Navel wasn't real fond of homosexuals and Arabs and Hollywood Jews, although he didn't use them kinds of terms in his sermons. — James Lee Burke

Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

and it goes, the music just goes, without faltering, without hesitation, not depleted through repetition, but enriched; and as it goes- without faltering, without hesitation- the rapid-rushing piece instantly becomes the soundtrack to what I am looking at, regardless of what it may be: the varied tilts of oldsters' hats, wind-gusts corduroying the park's grass, the sparkling of pram wheels, children stepping onto the water fountain's access ledge and hunchbacking behind their button-pushing hand and jutting lips; — Evan Dara

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ] — Jim Jarmusch

If a man were to spend years of his life trying to discover the chemical constituency of salt water without bothering to find out what has already been said on the subject in any elementary chemistry book, we should say that he was making very imperfect use of the resources available to us. Similarly, can it not be said that people, worrying themselves sick over their individual frustrations, constantly suffering from petty irritations and hypertensions, are making extremely imperfect use of the available human resources of adjustment when they fail to strengthen and quiet themselves through contact with literature, music, painting, and the other arts? — S.I. Hayakawa

I decided to make spaghetti for lunch again. Not that I was the least bit hungry. But I couldn't just go on sitting on the sofa, waiting for the phone to ring. I had to move my body, to begin working toward some goal. I put water in a pot, turned on the gas, and until it boiled I would make tomato sauce while listening to an FM broadcast. The radio was playing an unaccompanied violin sonata by Bach. The performance itself was excellent, but there was something annoying about it. I didn't know whether this was the fault of the violinist or of my own present state of mind, but I turned off the music and went on cooking in silence. I heated the olive oil, put garlic in the pan, and added minced onions. When these began to brown, I added the tomatoes that I had chopped and strained. It was good to be cutting things and frying things like this. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that I could feel in my hands. I liked the sounds and the smells. — Haruki Murakami

And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. — Lord Byron

They were walking beside the stream and the Lion went before them: and he became so beautiful, and the music so despairing, that Jill did not know which of them it was that filled her eyes with tears.
Then Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. — C.S. Lewis

Wishbone

Half-eaten chicken
lying on white serving plate
quartered potatoes
chunks of carrots
celery too
we tell stories
and laugh about the day
your little finger is locked around the wishbone
so is mine
I pretend to make a wish
close my eyes
mumbling my lips
that's the way I faked out the nuns
pretending to say the rosary
so they would leave me alone
your face is so determined
you win the wrestling match
lifting your piece of chicken bone above your head
in victory
I know better than to ask
what did you wish for
secret desires of the heart are not to be shared
or
they won't come true
everyone knows that
you clean the dishes
I turn on the TV
lying on the couch
listening to you make music
with running water
and closing cupboard doors. — Robert Hobkirk

I maintain that when I finally retire from my career in music, I will go and live back in Wales - when I am an old person, if I live to be an old person. The water I miss, and the air, there's something different about it. And I miss the simple life. — Ellie Goulding

Flowing water is at once a picture and a music, which causes to flow at the same time from my brain, like a limpid and murmuring rivulet, sweet thoughts, charming reveries, and melancholy remembrances. — Alphonse Karr

LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to every one of these essences of existence, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry "Wow!" all the time, which is one of LSD's most distressing and least endearing side-effects. — Stephen Fry

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. — Friedrich Holderlin

Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water,
Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light,
Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter ...
Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night.
Walking alone ... was it splendor, or what, we were bound with?
Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?
Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with
Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air. — F Scott Fitzgerald

His fingers touched the strings and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once. — Madeline Miller

We didn't have words. We didn't have writing or maps or language, but we had music and in that music, we spoke victory and loss, sadness and rage. We sang fire and water, earth and sky. We wrote the history of the Battle of Lamos and told the story of Selisanae of the Sun and wove the tragedy of the lives and deaths of dragons in every land. It was marvellous. — H. Leighton Dickson

I should like to take the wind and water and sand as a motif and work with them, but it has to be simplified in most cases to colour and force lines, just as music has done with sound. — Arthur Dove

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter
to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. — Albert Schweitzer

Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore. — Loren Eiseley

Depression was a successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship [ ... ] feeling bad all the time and expecting the worst had been natural ways of equilibrating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news [ ... ] Grim situations were Katz's niche the way murky water was a carp's [ ... ] he might well have started making music again, had it not been for the accident of success. He flopped around on the ground, heavily carplike, his psychic gills straining futilely to extract dark sustenance from an atmosphere of approval and plenitude. — Jonathan Franzen

Live in rooms full of light. Avoid heavy food. Be moderate in the drinking of wine. Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics. Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water. Change surroundings and take long journeys. Strictly avoid frightening ideas. Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements. Listen to music. — Aulus Cornelius Celsus

Music was like food, like water, like air - that necessary, that essential - and here she was in a break-on-through mood and nothing for it but her own stumbling version caught like lint on her tongue. — T.C. Boyle

Polly came stepping very demurely down the stairs, but the demureness emphasized the gaiety of the crimson ribbons on her bonnet and the sparkle in her eyes, and as she came the bells began to ring. Isaac opened the front door and light and air and music poured in, broke against Emma like bright water against a dark rock, flowed around her, joined behind her, and to Isaac's fancy filled the house. "Shut the door, Isaac," said Emma sharply from the pavement. Isaac did so and then leaned against it chuckling. "Too late, Emma," he said. "It's in. — Elizabeth Goudge

Stockholm is unique in that it's built on islands and surrounded by water, so you get this enormous sense of freedom. It's got everything you could possibly need - everything New York or London has but without all the people and traffic. It's also become a very creative city, not only for music but also for fashion and computer games. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines. — Li Bai

Kissing him is like falling into a river, some great fierce current carrying me outside of my body, and all around us the music of the water rises and rises, and I can hear the wind moving over the sand, the distant singing of the stars veiled behind their curtain of blue sky, the slow, resonant chords of the earth turning on its axis. — Sarah McCarry

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. — Jim Jarmusch

A bit reluctantly, trying to leave my bruised ego behind, I was warming to the Appalachian idea.
Bourbon and branch water. Dulcimer music. Wildflowers in jelly jars. Biscuits and country ham. That did have a certain charm. — Judith Fertig

Winding her arms close around his neck, she closed her eyes. To be embraced, safe in a man's arms when she had never expected it to happen again, this would be enough.Time sheltered their embrace, enfolding them within a summer scented capsule that felt endless and theirs alone. The fragrance of grass and sunlight and nearby water sweetened each breath. Theirs was the music of birds ans the lazy buzz of insects and the beating of two hearts. Yes, she thought, she didn't need more. This would be enough. — Maggie Osborne

Young people are experts on leisure, water skiing, dancing, rock music, rapping, TV watching ... by and large, chores are a thing of the past. — Billy Graham

You make me thirsty, Promethea, my river, you make me eternally thirsty, my water. As if I had spent my life in an old house of dried mud, so dry myself that I could not even thirst, until yesterday. And suddenly yesterday, the dusty floor of my old house burst open and while I was still dozing away my parched existence, drop by drop I heard the music of coolness awaken the thirst under my dry soul. And leaning over the dark shaft of my life, I saw my childhood springs unearthed. Is that always how (by accident) we rediscover Magdalenian riches? — Helene Cixous

Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world! — Ted Nugent

I always have wanted to know how the whole thing was done, what the process involved. And I don't particularly enjoy that my music is stripped of ancillary details, and it just sort of comes out of this big tap called the Internet like water. I like some of my water to be neatly presented in a bottle.With a label on it. — Brian Eno

Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle. — E. M. Forster

Ars Poetica

To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of mankind's days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours. — Jorge Luis Borges

Except for a couple of hours
in the morning
which I passed in the company
of a sage
I stayed in bed
without food
only a few mouthfuls of water
"you are a fine looking old man"
I said to myself in the mirror
"and what is more
you have the correct attitude
You don't care if it ends
or if it goes on
And as for the women
and the music
there will be plenty of that
in Paradise"
Then I went to the Mosque
of Memory
to express my gratitude — Leonard Cohen

Would you like to see where I will build your house, m'lady?"
She grinned. "You mean our house?"
He mirrored her smile. "Aye."
Taking her hand, he led her along the path to the mouth of the River Coe. They stood on a curved peninsula high above the river where it would be free from floods. Hugh spread his arms wide and looked across Loch Leven. "The hills of Glencoe will be our backdrop, the river of the Coe will be our music, and our galleys will sail through the water of the Leven to Loch Linnhe and out to sea. Mark me, my love, Clan Iain Abrach will rebuild, and will once again rule these lands."
He looked into her eyes and saw joy there. "And you will be my queen. — Amy Jarecki

And evermore the waters worship God;
And bards and prophets tune their mystic lyres
While listening to the music of the waves! — Sarah Josepha Hale

Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? — Henry David Thoreau

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat's. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec's, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants.
And then there was Camille. — Cassandra Clare

The words (she was looking at the window) sounded as if they were floating like flowers on water out there, cut off from them all, as if no one had said them, but they had come into existence of themselves. "And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves." She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said different things. — Virginia Woolf

Love was the greatest of enchantments; if Echidna and her children succeeded in killing Kypris, Thelxiepeia would no doubt, would doubtless ... Become the goddess of love in a century or less, said the Outsider, standing not behind Silk as he had in the ball court, but before him - standing on the still water of the pool, tall and wise and kind, with a face that nearly came into focus. I would claim her in that case, long before the end. As I have so many others. As I am claiming Kypris even now because love always proceeds from me, real love, true love. First romance. The Outsider was the dancing man on a toy, and the water the polished toy-top on which he danced with Kypris, who was Hyacinth and Mother, too. First romance, sang the Outsider with the music box. First romance. It was why he was called the Outsider. He was outside - — Gene Wolfe

It was the explosion of EDM music where profit margins were exponentially higher because the entire under-aged clientele arrived totally fucked up on pills and needed to stay hydrated at the price of $7 per bottle for water. — T/James Reagan

Cold,
cold water,
surrounds me now,
and all I've got is your hand. — Damien Rice

Come all you mad and raging fearless friends of war and peace,
Come all you sad self-righteous frightened friends down on your bended knees,
All beings on this earth, you must not harm them;
All weapons you hold deep within your heart, you must disarm them.
Every man you meet's your son.
Every woman is your daughter.
Go find someeone who's thirsty,
And give them water. — Butch Hancock

The sound of the wind stretches its limbs.
The jazz music witholds some of its ruckus.
Hands move something in the dark.
I say: just an old romanticism...
No matter, the place will fit everything.

Vision descends upon flaccid pathways
and rides them on cheap metal.
Dried out trees and others take their water
from the drowned sand by force.
I say: a passing depression.
No matter, the place will fit everything.
During the day the sun approaches the mountain,
places its hand upon it,
its cold hand of lovers,
strikes stone with stone.
Mountain scrub dances behind the stone.
The sun does not see it.
Only the moon shines upon it all the way beyond the bend
and the guardian stones watch from afar.
I say: a passing coincidence.
No matter, the place will fit everything. — Ashur Etwebi

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it. — James Joyce

Where, then, do we find the truth? We find it in the body, in the woods, in the water, in the soil. We find it in music, dance, and sometimes in poetry. We find it in a baby's face, and in the adult's face behind the mask. We find it in each other's eyes, when we look. We find it in an embrace, which is, when we feel into it, being to being, an incredibly intimate act. We find it in laughter and sobs, and we find it in the voice behind the spoken word. We find it in fairy tales and myths, and the tales we tell, even if fictional. Sometimes embroidering a tale enlarges it as a vehicle for the truth. We find it in silence and stillness. We find it in pain and loss. We find it in birth and death. — Charles Eisenstein

The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars. — John Muir

The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything. — Alison Gopnik

An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song's sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words. — Boris Pasternak

When people ask me if I have a hobby, a lot of times my answer is that I like to surf in warm water. I like to ski, if I have the opportunity. But really, I like to go to my studio and write music that I want to write, where there's no pressure to come up with a hit single. — Scott Weiland

When there came a sound that I'd never heard the like of in all my born days. Eh, I won't forget that. The whole air was full of it, loud as thunder but far longer, cool and sweet as music over water but strong enough to shake the woods. And I said to myself, 'If that's not the Horn, call me a rabbit. — C.S. Lewis

Una furtiva lacrima had been the only really beautiful thing in her life. Wiping away her own tears she tried to sing what she heard. But her voice was as crude and out of tune as she was. When she heard it she started to cry. It was the first time she'd ever cried, she didn't know she had so much water in her eyes. She cried, blew her nose no longer knowing what she was crying about. She wasn't crying because of the life she led: because, never having led any other, she'd accepted that with her that was just the way things were. But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling, there were more delicate existences and even a certain luxury of soul. — Clarice Lispector

Say what you want about fairies, but you haven't rocked out until you've heard Smoke on the Water played on a harpsichord. ~Harlow — Red Tash

It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out. — Francesca Lia Block

Music overwhelmed me, soaked into my skin like water. I didn't have words for the squiggles and dashes across the pages, or the way his fingers stretched across the keys to make my heart race. If I could hear only one thing for the rest of my life, this was what I wanted. — Jodi Meadows

I nodded, unsure if Ted sounded admiring or angry. 'I waded in but I couldn't find him. I mean, is it possible - the water wasn't deep enough for him to drown. It doesn't make any sense.'
'My band made four brilliant albums and never had a single goddamn hit. We were supposed to be the American Rolling Stones, and we couldn't get more than five minutes of airplay. Does that make sense?' Ted stubbed out his cigarette. — Elizabeth Hand

My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other. — Charles Bukowski

Science is part of culture. Culture isn't only art and music and literature, it's also understanding what the world is made of and how it functions. People should know something about stars, matter and chemistry. People often say that they don't like chemistry but we deal with chemistry all the time. People don't know what heat is, they hardly know what water is. I'm always surprised how little people know about anything. I'm puzzled by it. — Max F. Perutz

Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"
A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat - a sailboat. I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second. — Nina Simone

Before the Battle:
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night. — Siegfried Sassoon