Van Morrison Quotes

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

Into the Music was about the first album where I felt, 'I'm starting here'...the Wavelength thing, I didn't really feel that was me.

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

Sometimes, when the spirit moves me I can do many wondrous things I wanna know when the spirit moves you Did ye get healed?

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.

You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.

There's always stress involved in any genre or art form, there's always going to be a struggle. If there's no struggle, you wouldn't do anything. What are you going do? Retire?

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

I've got love in my life, as well as trouble and strife.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

My responsibility is to fulfil what that natural thing is. The thing that I dislike about pop rock Top 40 music is that it's not natural.

I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.

And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain.

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.

In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.

The trip had become boring. It wasn't exciting anymore to totally be a singer/songwriter because it wasn't working for me.

I'm talking about noise rock. I don't think that noise rock element belongs in jazz. It's not for me anyway; it just doesn't fit.

I forgot that love existed, troubled in my mind. Heartache after heartache, worried all the time. I forgot that love existed Then I saw the light Everyone around me make everything alright.

I was just getting tired of the image bullshit...that man of mystery trip and what have you. What's that all about?

When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now.

I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.

I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

I educated myself. To me, school was boring.

My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

From the dark end of the street - To the bright side of the road - We'll be lovers once again on the - Bright side of the road

It's a marvelous night for a moondance!

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from.

[You Got To Make It Through The World] it's kind of a survival song. Survival is what's happening and it's basically a song about that.

Way across the country where the hillside mountains glide, the dynamo of your smile caressed the barefoot virgin child.

Once you start to analyze it [Joyous Sound], you've completely lost it. That one just came.

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old And magnificently we will fold into the mystic

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.

When heart is open, you will change just like a flower slowly opening.

At the end of the day, we should give thanks and pray, to the one, to the one.

There's an angel that's watching right over you All your trials have not been in vain Won't you lift your head up to the starry night Finding strength in the things that remain.

The way I was singing the songs was jazz

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.

I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.

The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.