Van Morrison Quotes

A lot of things come together to make up a song. It's just images.

Rock is gut level and it just gets to people. I think there's far too much emphasis on intellectualization, especially in rock 'n' roll which is a primitive form.

I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock 'n' roll.

Britain is not the same anymore of course. It's never the same.

What I like is natural music. It's like I was born with a gift to do something naturally, which I have no choice but to followup on.

I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever.

If you never hear from me that just means I would rather not.

When the spirit moves me, I can do many wondrous things.

This Hollywood ain't no good, I would rather be like Robin Hood.

Jackie Wilson said it was Reet-Petite, kind of love you got knock me off my feet.

For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts, it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cos I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls.

Enlightenment says the world is nothing Nothing but a dream, everything's an illusion And nothing is real.

Shivers up and down my spine It's a feeling so divine Let me go back for a while Got to go back for a while To that magic time.

Illusions and pipe dreams on the one hand And straight reality is always cold

If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.

I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically.

The whole trip that happened in the late 60s and 70s was kind of a throwback to a lot of folk styles. I got into it as well 'cause I started with the folk styles.

I don't have any regrets about the album [Veedon Fleece]. But it's the same old story - an album is basically 35 or 40 minutes of what you do. It's 'part' of what you do.

You can put out an album and it could be totally out of the window as far as what you want to do performance-wise.

If the spirit comes through in a Madame George type of song, that's what the spirit says. You have very little to do with it. You're like an instrument for what's coming through.

I was all caught up with identifying with certain things. They just weren't very stimulating things.

The idea [of A Period of Transition album] was to get a break from everything for a while because I've been doing it for so long. I started doing it when I was 12.

I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

I wanted to find out why I wasn't getting off on what I was doing and try and make some sense out of the evolution of it.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

I'd found that what I wrote and put out on records somehow was not fitting into how I perform on stage.

What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll.

Everybody's got their own particular vision which is a personal thing.

[Touring] is not necessarily a priority. It's just a part of who I am as a performer. That's obviously why I'm doing it; why I'm in this business is part of me has to perform.

I have to accept the fact that I was putting out records that reviewers were going to get an image from.

The media is going to stick a label on records. And the public is going to pick it up from that. And that's what I was getting sick of-the whole analyzation thing.

The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from.

I just can't stand jazz/rock. I think it's the worst thing that's come down the river yet.

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.

It's real difficult to pin down directions. I just want to do collaboration-tape stuff.

Performing was the natural thing originally and the rest of it [records and so on] is just like offshoots of that. That's how I see it anyway.

hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic...

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...

The future is keeping you out of the present time.