Van Morrison Quotes

If you're putting somebody down, you're doing it because you're just seeing a part of yourself that you don't like. That's all that is.

Oh won't you stay Stay a while with your own ones Don't ever stray Stray so far from your own ones 'Cause the world is so cold Don't care nothing for your soul That you share with your own ones.

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.

Sartre said that hell is other people, I believe that most of them are

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around.

I think intellectualization is what's killing most people.

Sometimes you do know where the ideas are coming from and sometimes you don't. You might get a song coming through that you just don't know about.

There's a realization that you have to do something but you just can't do it all the time.

I haven't really heard much that's impressed me the way it was when I first heard Ray Charles or somebody like that. That was really an impression.

I've always listened to jazz or folk or blues. I was always listening to the prophets. I don't really go for...I don't know how to say anything about the singles scene without slamming people.

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across.

I shall drive my chariot down your street and cry hey it's me.

I just wanted to have a look at my whole musical career, get right back to when I started and why I started doing it in the first place.

I never, ever said that I was a nice guy.

Skiffle was blues featuring a washboard and acoustic instruments. It encompassed blues, with elements of folk, jazz, and, at times, American country-and-western music.

I think we're going a bit too fast at the minute. The rate we're going is like we're going over the edge of the hill.

If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.

I also like to do physical things. I like swimming a lot. I like traveling. Not touring traveling but just plain traveling. I also read a lot. Reading takes up most of my time.

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.

I just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing.

[Jazz musicians] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.

Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds that I may be a vehicle for thee.

Become enraptured by the sights and sounds in intrigue of nature and beauty, come along with me and take it all in. Come here my love.

It will make you feel good, and it will make you feel whole, when the spirit moves you and it fills you through and through.

In the gentle evening freeze, by the whispering shady trees I will find sanctuary in the Lord.

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back.

All the girls walk by dressed up for each other, and the boys do the boogie woogie on the corner of the street.

Way over on the railroad, Tomorrow all the tipping trucks will unload together, Every scrapbook stuck with glue, And I'll stand beside you, Beside you, child.

I have seen without perceiving I have been another man Let me pierce the realm of glamour So I know just what I am.

If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams, where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the back roads stop. Could you find me?

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.

My experiences with dope were not good for me. I had to go another route. Because in my experience, dope didn't give me those insights.

I'm still basically the same as I always was. I still listen to the same people. That's where I'm coming from.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

I'll tell you what does impress me: the fact that a lot of the cats who were our idols are still out there doing it. That impresses me very much.

Jazz goes into folk music, into rock music. Jazz is in practically everything except classical music where they're reading the same music all the time, the same way, the same tempo every night.

There aren't any labels - all jazz means is improvization and you can never play a tune the same way twice. So jazz spills over into everything.

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.

That's the jazz that I like - the stuff that has a soothing effect.

[Being alcoholic] you're either too high or you're too low. I mean, I was always looking for the bell to ring. I was always waiting for that bell.

I just can't stand it [jazz/rock]. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't hit me...it doesn't get me...it just doesn't grab me.

Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.

I just like any music to swing, no matter what it is.

I don't like to condemn people because what that means is that you're only condemning yourself about a part of you that you can't stand.

If you want to put your rock 'n' roll into mythology, [A Period of Transition] is from the Daddy Cool school.

What I really like to do is just do the twist!

I have some intellectual-type pursuits, like studying philosophy and stuff like that.

I think I opened up an area with Astral Weeks that hit a lot of peoples' nerves. But you can't really say that they're my favorite songs.

I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there's so many different things that can make a song come together.