Quotes & Sayings About When The Music Stops

No one who's been into music ever really stops being into it. It's in your soul forever. Maybe it gets buried deep under piles of shit for a while, but it's always there, waiting to make you happy again. — Ophelia London

In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs & the floor dances — Rumi

Ethan seemed to revel in Carter's most hated tics. He'd set them to music. The light bounce of notes, starts and stops, of Ethan's song, it was the music of Carter's Tourette's, and Ethan had made it beautiful. He'd made Carter feel beautiful for having them. — Ryan Loveless

There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old ... When the duties of life have all been nobly done; when the sun touches the horion; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days-then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed.
Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have. — George Alec Effinger

We are conjured voiceless out of nothing and must return to an unknowing state. What happens in between is an uncontrolled dance, and what we ask for in love is no more than a momentary chance to get the steps right, to move in harmony until the music stops. — Louise Erdrich

Consider this, music is a collection of sounds and silences, if music was just a constant sound, it would be horrible and difficult to listen to, if music was just silence there would be nothing to listen to. In fact, rests could be easily compared to punctuation, if we ignored commas and full stops then reading and indeed speaking would become chaotic. — Michael Shaw

I'm not turning my back on music anytime soon, but it's just a blessing to have options open. A lot of artists just have rap, and that's it. But once rap stops, it's hard to get into that Hollywood circle; it really is. It's a whole 'nother beast that people think they're ready for, but they're really not. — Bow Wow

Underneath runs the main current of preoccupation, which is keeping one's nose clean at all times. This means that when things go wrong you have to pass the blame along the line, like pass-the-parcel, till the music stops. — Tom Stoppard

It's strange, the lack of emotion, the absence of drama in reality. When things happen in real life, extraordinary things, there's no music, there's no dah-dah-daaahhs. There's no close-ups. No dramatic camera angles. Nothing happens. Nothing stops, the rest of the world goes on. — Kevin Brooks

Real estate is the best investment on earth, however, when the music stops playing, which happens occasionally, don't be the one left without a chair. — Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. — W. H. Auden

A BIRTHDAY
Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones
these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes
the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you
when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see. — W.S. Merwin

Love is an anchor -- it stops you from drifting away. Love is sticking up for your friends and family, or even your pets. Love is being brave and saying what you feel. Love is making music or playing tennis; it's doing what you want to do. Love is holding on and not letting go. — Robert Corbet

There are people whose death leaves you with an ache of grief. A slight sting. And then there are people whose death stops time. Deaths that leave the sky murky all day long because even the sun is grieving. Deaths that shut down your muscles and stop the music. Deaths that turn every corner of your mind a shade of grey before they light up in a flame and shrivel away. — Patricia Amaro

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living. — Anais Nin

Every page of a great novel should be crafted like a beautiful melody, to linger on long after the music stops playing. — Johnny Flora

but if that ever stops, I'm just going to remove your head from your shoulders and see how good you are at healing yourself. You understand step two?" "Yes. What's step three?" "Oh, yes, that's an easy one. Tell the DJ to stop playing this god-awful shit and put something fun on. Maybe a bit of Kenny Loggins, you can't go wrong with Footloose. Everyone likes Kevin Bacon." Karl's eyes widened in shock. "Are you insane?" "Hey, Kenny isn't that bad. Yeah it's a bit cheesy, but it's a good fun song." I stared at Karl for a heartbeat. "Oh, you meant in general. No, I just really fucking hate dance music. — Steve McHugh

You can't say that people don't love music anymore because they do. If we say that all the music stopped, if music stops now, the world can't handle that. We need our music. — Warryn Campbell

Geordie stepped forward and took her hand. "I hope you're not tired, because I intend to keep you on my arm until the music stops. — Amy Jarecki

To me, it's always a joy to create music no matter what it takes to actually get there. The real evils are always whatever stops you from doing that - like if your CPU is spiking and you have to sit there and bounce all your MIDI to audio. Now that's annoying! — Skrillex

Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings, no vocals, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death. — John Updike

The sniper puts the cellist in his sights. Arrow is about to send a bullet into him, but stops. His finger isn't on the trigger ... His hand isn't even in the vicinity of the trigger ... His head leans back slightly, and she sees that his eyes are closed, that he is no longer looking through his scope. She knows what he's doing. It's very clear to her, unmistakable. He's listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn't fire yesterday ... She is at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. Time is running out. There's no reason not to kill him. A sniper of his ability has wihtout doubt killed dozens, if not hundreds. Not just soldiers. Women crossing streets. Children in playgrounds. Old men in water lines. She knows this to a certainity. Yet she doesn't want to pull her trigger. All because she can see that he doesn't want to pull his ... The final notes of the cellist's melody reach him, and he smiles. — Steven Galloway

Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops. — William Shakespeare

What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways.
I stretch out on the floor with my ear parked next to the speaker, in a trance. I place the album cover over my face to block out any interruption as "I'll Be Your Mirror" seduces me. I immediately add the song to my mental list of top ten songs ever.
And as I'm bobbing my head with dreamy abandon, I hear a voice. "Nice choice, DJ," it says.
I slowly slide the album cover down past my eyes and look up. My eyes spy his shoes first
paint-splattered brogues. My heart stops when I look at his face. Pale skin, messy black hair, emerald eyes ... Senor Smolder! He's eighteen, maybe nineteen. And no, my imagination didn't lie, he is just as devastating now as he was the first time I saw him. Only even more, because he just complimented my taste in music. — Shauna Cross

I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general ... is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in. — Leonard Cohen

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. They're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops. — Sara Zarr

There are always new things to experience, internalize then write about. This process is ongoing with me. It never stops. The opportunity to reach new audiences with all of the music that we have made is thrilling. — Graham Nash

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn't happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it. — Ben Folds

I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.'
Huh. As if. — Helen Fielding

What happens when the music stops? Where does it go? — Michael Tilson Thomas

I used to be a dreamer, like you were until you reached the morning before battle just a few minutes ago. It's all well and good to dream and hope, but the cold harsh truth of it all is that everything is a cycle. We just march to the beat of the music until it stops, then we hope we can find a chair. I like my chair. — Nathan Wall

Johnny Flora "The Spell of Zalanon" > quotable quote (edit)
"Every page of a great novel should be crafted like a beautiful melody, to linger on long after the music stops playing."
- Johnny Flora "The Spell of Zalanon — Johnny Flora

I did record a bunch of stuff, but the thing that usually stops me from doing that is that I'm a terrible singer. I made a bunch of instrumental music, and it feels really good, but just as a singer, I'm not good. — Flea

Music stops you from thinking. — Peter Weir

When I get on the dance floor, my purpose in being on the dance floor is not to end up at another spot when the music stops. The purpose of the dance is to enjoy every step along the way. — Wayne Dyer

The greater fool is actually an economic term. It's a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool - someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their life trying not to be the greater fool; we toss him the hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by greater fools. — Aaron Sorkin

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

The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops the earth will stop and everything upon it will die. — Sun Ra

What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked.
When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by."
What will I find on the other side?"
The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies. — Michael Ende

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line — Duke Ellington

When we sing, I am one of many, and the individual me evaporates. I am one of 23 university choir members. Not a professor. Not an American. Not a 46-year-old in the midst of twentysomethings. Not a woman trying to outpace the aspects of self she has yet to make oeace with. I am simply what we all are
another voice, a set of lungs, some vocal chords and someone who finds joy and comfort in singing. But when the music stops, so does the we. The union dissolves. The silence transforms first person plural into first person singular. — Laura Kelly

God's signature is not just in the cell, it's in all of creation. God is as necessary to the universe as a band is to music. Once the band stops playing, the music is over. — Frank Turek

Everything freezes. The blood stops flowing in my veins. My breath stops coming. For a second even the music falls aways and all I hear is something steady and quiet and pretty, like the distant beat of a drum, and I think, i'm hearing my heart, except I know that's impossible, because my heart has stopped too. — Lauren Oliver

As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music. — Chogyam Trungpa

Great music stops the inner turmoil of thought and allows the mind to seek its natural state of joy. Music frees our minds and allows us to soar to heights where we can experience the celestial. Music opens our minds to allow the perception of new thoughts of a higher nature, which gives us a spiritual lift, which produces yet more joy. — Wu Wei

The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops. — Robert Helpmann

The Ill Wind Promises"

When the oscillator hums, I'll hold your hand
When they come to get you, I'll pull you aside
When the engine purrs, I'll find the right words
When the music stops, your lips may have to part

When your baby's born, I'll carry his name
When your mother visits, I'll hide in your bed
When your husband comes by, I'll turn up the music
When the party's over, I'll hand you your handbag

When you kiss me, I'll stick a hand in your pocket
When your lover calls, I'll braid your hair
When they come to get you, I'll talk nonsense
When you're dead and gone, I'll smoke a cigarette — Ann Cotten

Cause when I hear your name I can not stop cheesing
I love you so much that my heart stops beating when you're leaving
And I'm grieving and my heart starts bleeding
Life without you has no goddamn meaning — Various

When Rosencrantz asks Hamlet, "Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your grief to your friends"(III, ii, 844-846), Hamlet responds, "Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." (III,ii, 371-380) — William Shakespeare

The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything. — Charlie Haden

It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops ... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue. — Kim Gordon

Never gonna stop 'til the clock stops tickin'
Never gonna quit 'til my legs stop kickin'
I will follow you and we'll both go missin'
No I'm never givin' up 'til my heart stops beatin'
Never lettin' go 'til my lungs stop breathing
I will follow you and we'll both go missin'
No, I and we don't even know where we're going
But I'm sitting with you and I'm glowing — The Script

And when one song stops playing write the one that will save your life. — Shannon L. Alder

When the music stops the hole inside me is so huge I think I might die from it. Without — Sarah McCarry

It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins. — Richard Wagner

Music never stops; it is only the listening that is intermittent. — Henry David Thoreau

Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being ... — Frederic Chopin

Life is like--like one of those hobby-horses you ride at a fair--round and round you go enjoying every moment and then the--then the music stops... — Winston Graham

The screaming audience is no matter for the wild, sexy music. Crowds dance is the aisles; people stand on their bench seats and clap to the drums. My arms are in the air waving to the music. My hips and head sway on their own. Before I see his face, his arms are around my waist, my back to his chest, his chin in my hair. Then his hands are on my stomach and I am dropping mine to hold on to his while we dance back to front. When the music stops I turn around to look at him. He smiles. I am moist and shivering. — Toni Morrison

I make grilled cheeses for lunch, one for me, two for Will. We don't have any chips, but I find a far of pickles in the pantry.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten." He pauses for a drink, staring at me over the rim of his glass of juice.
"It's the provolone," I say, swallowing my last bite.
"It's the chef."
I smile and look away.
We listen to music. Talk. Kiss until my flesh glimmers gold-red. Warms to the touch from the deep scald at my core. He stops to watch. Leans his face close to my neck and smells my skin. Like I'm something he might taste. He sweeps his hands along my arms ... making me burn hotter.
"Is this what it's like for other fire-breathers?" he asks, winks, holding my hand up in his broad palm. "Or is it just me and my magic hands? — Sophie Jordan

A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine. — Sebastian Faulks

Heart as collapsed time, as a dug-up grave, as simple machine. Heart as big black bugs bleed blue blood. Heart as MI frozen as seen from airplane, everything still and white and beautiful. Heart as the Day the Music Died. Heart as love being made, as fucking, as a pleasantly haunted house. Heart as a dim memory of a dark room in which you're molded wetasscracked into a beanbag chair, fumbling for wetness. Come hither. Heart as a cunt's supposed to smell like tuna. Heart as the star of the sea. Heart as a pussy in permanent bloom. Heart as doxycycline. Heart as waxwings, as a fudge round, as the phone rings once and then stops. Heart as throw your hands in the air, throw your art at the stars, stutter and stare. Heart as a Stratocaster. Heart as Twin Reverb. Heart as I heart you so much. Heart as all that we thought we knew in the world disappears into vapor. Heart as the rest of your life times the weight of the world squared. — Bryan Charles

The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken. — David Nicholls

Other nations merely change governments as a lady changes dancing partners: Canada contrives to fall in a dead faint every time the music stops. — Gordon Donaldson