When Music Quotes & Sayings

I'm sure we all have dreams of leaving at some time in our lives, but when we reach the bottom, most of us go running home. — Deborah Curtis

I never liked hearing anyone say I was the new George Gershwin, because I knew I could have never even carried that man's music case. If George Gershwin hadn't died when he was thirty-nine years old, there is no knowing how much more great music he would have written. — Burt Bacharach

I started playing the piano, pretty much on my own, when I was 5, and I started writing music when I was 7. In fact, I won a composition award. It was a crummy little piece, but I won with it. — Maury Yeston

People clutch onto each other, but the orchestra plays on, because when everything else in life fails, there still has to be music — Anonymous

My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever. — Chris Isaak

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

When we cannot see, we don't judge. Small wonder when we kiss, cry, laugh, make love, are in pain, pray and listen to music, we close our eyes. — Sabine Shah

When I was a kid, I was following black soul music. — Robert Plant

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

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

When you want genuine music
music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,
when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! — Mark Twain

It's different now but I enjoy it more than I did then. I think I appreciate it more now and I love playing acoustically. This is the way I started. Herb and I met each other forty years ago when we were both eighteen years old, playing bluegrass, and that's what drew me into music, and I enjoyed every particular part of my career. But now I enjoy it because it's the twilight of my career, where I can play what I want and I can play when I want and where I want. And that's the greatest part it all. So it's sort of a right that I've earned. I can record records the way I want to. — Chris Hillman

When I hire musicians, I look for that first: every time they sit down do they go for it, you know? And do they try to learn the music and try to get inside the song whatever the tune is? Whether it's my originals or someone else's, it's just whether or not they're gonna play their hearts out, first and foremost. — Mike Stern

But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becoming a character through clothes. — Florence Welch

When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands. — Kellin Quinn

Melody had heard some of these people from the Ukraine singing. He hadn't understood one word. Yet he didn't have to know the words to understand what they were wailing about. Words didn't count when the music had a tongue. The field hands of the sloping red-hill country in Kentucky sang that same tongue. — William Attaway

There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for. — Stephen Levine

When I was on the ice, in the lights, with the music and the motion, there was a certain kind of flirtation that gave great energy and expressiveness to my performance. — Peggy Fleming

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting. — Drake

When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream of consciousness that exists in music, nobody knows where that comes from. — Wynton Marsalis

We need music the most when we're feeling things really intensely. I think the most intense times in your life are when you're either falling in love or losing it — Taylor Swift

Even if there were no illegal copying, the advent of digital distribution will put a lot of stress on the movie and music industry. When the distribution costs comes down, that puts more price pressure on the rest of the cost. — Edward Felten

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar ...
... Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the end of music if not the love of beauty? — Plato

Sometimes, when I play music, I feel as if I am giving life ... It isn't just notes on the paper anymore: you are recreating the thought, transmitting it. It becomes shareable, but it can never be kept. You go through and at the same time you let go of the experience. That is part of the wonder of music: it can never be kept; it is ephemeral and at the same time enduring. — Hephzibah Menuhin

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours
it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it. — Greil Marcus

I've gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I'll go and put on something different to shake myself awake. — Kelly Link

It's very strange what happens when I start working for a film. In my life I've done a lot of stuff - I did a lot of dance music, a lot of TV shows and lots of different types of films - and every time it is a new experience. — Claudio Simonetti

A good rock band is like a great lover. Their rhythms simultaneously jolt and calm you. They know when and where to tease you to make it feel the best, how to draw from you the ultimate pleasure. — Tom Leveen

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

I'm surrounded by music; I always was when I was growing up and continue to be. And I love music. And when I imagine a fictional world, I imagine there's music in it for those people, too. — Lorrie Moore

That's what it is. That's what my morning was like: all these real physical heavy positive vibrations, the soul of this tape. The fuzzy groove. The meaning of it all, if it has one: All love, all the time. Peace and happiness in every day. Peace and happiness with cow blood dripping from your hands, bright blood staining your fingerprints because you didn't glove up since you don't normally do prep work. Peace and happiness when you're making a list of everything that's wrong with the world and squinting your eyes tight trying to imagine your way out of it. Peace, peace, peace, happiness, happiness, happiness. — John Darnielle

When you're in the music business, everything is very personal, because you are invested in everything; there's a very deep, personal attachment to your music. — Larry Mullen

When I approach a band, I want to respect them and be respectful of their music. I'm not gonna say, 'Look, you guys are real hot, so we'll stick you in the movie, and we'll get it in all these stores and all these stations.' That isn't right. — John Hughes

I told my students the other day in class, which is about the spirituality and creativity as much as it is about music. I said, 'If you're walking down the street and you see a baby carriage, and there's a baby in the carriage; you look down and your eyes meet the eyes of the baby. The baby looks at you: That's the kind of moment you're in when you're playing. — Charlie Haden

When you're in Jamaica, unless you're in a tourist spot, you don't hear Bob Marley; you mostly hear dance hall music. — Michael Franti

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me. — Billy Crystal

I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians. — Harry Connick Jr.

I'm touched by Jon Hendricks. I want some of my music to reflect that. And when I write, you're going to hear it. — Al Jarreau

When sunlight does to the surface of water, music does to the spirit. — Marty Rubin

When I listen to music from different eras, I sense different things. The 1940s music, there's so much optimism and romance, maybe because they just solved the biggest problem on Earth at that time - World War II. In the 1960s, there was so much creativity and innovation in sound. — Eric Betzig

Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed. — Elizabeth Strout

They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat. You must comply with their deceit, don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep. They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will never die. — Trevor D. Richardson

When you want to be close to me, listen to the music. The love is stored there and will not die. — Michael Jackson

I'm all about unity and loving your neighbor ... If somebody told me when I was growing up that the music I was listening to was stupid, and I listened to them, I wouldn't be where I am today. — Drake Bell

I need one, Momma, how come I don't have a baby sister?"

Rachel smiled. "You're so perfect. There was no need to ask for another."

Sophie cocked her head to the side like a puppy. "Ask who?"

"The Stork," Faith supplied.

Sophie looked thoroughly confused then. "I thought sex caused babies."

Rachel patted Faith on the back when she began to cough.

Kaycee shook her head. "Rhonda at school told me that special music causes babies. her sister told her that when her mom and dad play music in their bedroom, babies were being made. Momma, you play music in your room, but we don't have a baby."

"I don't have that particular CD, sweetie."

"My friend told me that it takes a penny and a Virginia to make a baby," Sophie said and sent Faith into another coughing fit. — Robin Alexander

WHO'S GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a women's bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati. Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is: Today, it is my turn to take the tampon. Tomorrow, it shall be yours. There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, I've found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens. — Amanda Palmer

The type of music that I love to sing would have to be more bluesy and jazzy and more soul-like 'cause I love to belt when it comes to singing, so I guess bigger songs are what I lean more towards. — Thia Megia

Faith is when music stops but you continue dancing. — Rudzani Ralph

All movies, when they're about the music business, tend to have a bit of a wide latitude in terms of how things really were. — Chris Squire

When you think about a composer you know like Wagner or Pier Boulez or something like that most of the issues a composer is working with are about discreet, notated music that someone else will play. — DJ Spooky

Once when asked how I would like to be remembered, I answered, "As someone who opened doors. — Dave Brubeck

I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I moved to L.A. when I was about eleven years old. I always go back to Milwaukee whenever I can. Just chill with my grandpa and my grandmother and just be with family, be with people that were there before I got a million views on YouTube because of my music video. — Jacob Latimore

I can see it, when your heart slows down. That's how I know when to call. I keep your heart - the icon of your heart - in one corner of my vision. All the time." Her stomach flipped over and tried to exit through her fingertips. Adrenaline jangled down her arms like music. Her mouth went dry and all she could taste was the burn of the drug in her throat. "See, there? It skipped. — Madeline Ashby

Who am I when I don't know myself? — 5 Seconds Of Summer

I love the music from Nat King Cole, BB King, Albert King ... When I think of it, I wouldn't mind being renamed Angus King. — Angus Young

I have always loved music and singing, and I am open to listen to any type of music. Regardless of my mood, my heart is always set racing when I listen to opera. When I decide which music I want to hear, my choice is almost invariably an opera recording. — Andrea Bocelli

I write incessantly, I'm very productive, I write for a dozen publications and blogs and websites. A lot of very hardcore political stuff. I write a weekly feature. I express myself. But when time comes to make music [with the] same absolutely unleashing of total honesty zero inhibitions, it just flows like a stream of conscientiousness because I will not be silenced no matter what my point might be. — Ted Nugent

When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer. — Richard Pinhas

If I could put my finger on it, I'd bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it - the climate, the smells. It's the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there's an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here. — John Goodman

The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away. — Marketa Irglova

The music seems creepy, like when children sing in a horror movie — Tina Fey

The same areas which are active in listening to music are also active when you imagine music, and this includes the motor areas, too. That explains why earlier, even though I was only thinking of the mazurka, I was thinking in terms of movement. — Oliver Sacks

Most of what has been written about me is one big blur, but I do remember being described in one simple word that I agree with. It was in a piece that tore me apart for my personal behavior, but the writer said that when the music began and I started to sing, I was "honest." — Frank Sinatra

I was about sixteen when I discovered that music could get you laid, so I got into music boy, didn't matter what you looked like either, you could be a geeky looking guy but if you played music, whoa, you'd get the girls. — Tommy Chong

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine. — Beth Ditto

Ser Rodrik groused. His opinion of singers was well known; music was a lovely thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any healthy boy would fill his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword. — George R R Martin

I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous. — Thom Mayne

It was like a dam of musical critique had broken. Imasu turned on him with eyes that flashed instead of shining. It is worse than you can possibly imagine! When you play, all of my mother's flowers lose the will to live and expire on the instant. The quinoa has no flavour now. The llamas are migrating because of your music, and llamas are not a migratory animal. The children now believe there is a sickly monster, half horse and half large mournful chicken, that lives in tha lake and calls out to the world to grant it the sweet release of death. — Cassandra Clare

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change. — David Amram

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

There's a whole gamut of things to do with film music that don't apply when you're making a record or if you're writing a concert piece or something. — Henry Jackman

There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful. — Eddie Vedder

There's also something happening in television similar to what happened in the '80s, when people stopped taking so many drugs and wanted to hear real instruments in music again. I think people want plot, story and characters. Those are more important than having a big star. — Jessica Pare

My son is the reason why I write music. He's the reason why everything is different for me. Because when he came into the picture, my priorities changed. I can risk possibly being incarcerated because the only person pays for it is me. I know that if I'm not physically available to take care of him, nobody else will. I want to have the relationship with him that me and my father never had. — Curtis Jackson

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy ... I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences. — Sinead O'Connor

When I'm in America, I like to be near the sea, listen to music, watch films, read and write. — Michael Sheen

There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk. — Tom Waits

I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. — J. D. Souther

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. — Arca

I laugh when people say they don't like poetry. They listen to poetry every day, what do they think music is? — Shannon Lynette

There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all. — Carla Bley

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's. — Tod Machover

Q: Why did the cranberries turn so red?
A: They saw the salad dressing!

Q: What was the Pilgrim's favorite music?
A: Plymouth rock!

Q: What's the best way to eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
A: Gobble it.

Q: What key do you use the most on Thanksgiving?
A: A tur-key!

Q: What did the turkey say when the Pilgrim grabbed him by the tail feathers?
A: That's the end of me!

Q: What did the turkey say just before it was popped into the oven?
A: I'm really stuffed. — Peter Roop

She realized he wasn't listening to music and gave him a curious look of amusement as she picked up the cover to an audio book. 'What To Expect When You're Expecting.'
God forgive me, I love this man.
"Thought I should be informed, you know?" Alessandro explained sheepishly.
Bree tried to tear her gaze away from his gleaming chest.
"Plus all the lactating and dilating and placenta talk does wonders to crush any man's libido. — E. Jamie

When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony. — Elliott Carter

But ebooks will rule the day, and when people a few years from now talk about 'books', what they'll really be referring to are ebooks, not print books. Eventually the 'e' will be dropped, and books will be assumed to be digital, just as most music is now digital; after all, we don't refer to music as e-music. — Jason Merkoski

Shakira's music isn't my cup of tea, but the way she moves her hips reminds me of the feeling you get when you climb the gym pole. — Brandon Boyd

Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't. — Josiah Bartlett

You know, radio DJ's must really love to talk to theirselves. Especially when they have the graveyard shift. 'Hey this is Ellen with 89.1. It is currently three in the morning. There are few cars on the road. And it your still listening heres a little music to get you to dance.. — Ellen DeGeneres

Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise. — George Gershwin

How could anyone not want to live when there were so many things to live for? There were rainy nights and wind and the slap of the sea and the moon. There were books to read and pictures to paint and music. — Michelle Magorian

Music has the potential and the capability to create something much bigger ... it has the capability to be completely free, to do anything. And I think you limit that idea when you put yourself in front of it, in a way. — Karin Dreijer Andersson

There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes. When the sound box is filled, no music can come forth. When the brain and the belly burn from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire. The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you ... — Rumi

I started in the late 70s, beginning of the 80s, and I think I started to sing and make music as a therapy for myself; I never planned to be an artist; sometimes when I think about it it's crazy that I'm here, and I'm touring, and I'm doing what I'm doing. — Mari Boine

Y'all drinking whiskey is probably a gregarious act. When you're not an alcoholic it's pretty fun to drink whiskey. But when you are it's a very solo ritual. It's not gregarious at all. But vice has always informed country music and all music. — Ketch Secor

Never stop supporting music because it will never stop being there for you when you need it. — Hayley Williams

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music ... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful. — Soren Kierkegaard

We really feel very humbled that we are a part of so many lives around the globe and that we can help connect people from everywhere with and through our music. My experiences with fans are mostly wonderful and I am always so grateful when I see what kind of positive effect our music has on people. All of our fan experiences are memorable in different way, but it is especially powerful and meaningful when you can feel that someone is really inspired with what you are doing. This is especially true for the young generation. It feels good to know that we can get these kids to pick up classical instruments and see them as instruments they can rock on. — Luka Sulic

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine