Music Quotes

My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I'm a natural musician

Not only can color, which is under fixed laws, be taught like music, but it is easier to learn than drawing, whose elaborate principles cannot be taught.

I know this music from memory, not from the music.

Surely again, to heal men's wounds by music's spell.

We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from.

I've made my own music, and the way I've always described it is Peggy Lee with an electric guitar, or Billie Holiday with some PJ Harvey in there.

...a good poem contains both meaning and music

What is great now is not even close to what Jimmy Hendrix was. We need to reevaluate the standards of what's [labeled] great music.

Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess.

Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.

Country music fans are extremely supportive. Once they're with you, they're with you for life.

Shania Twain brought a whole other fan base to country music with her sound, the way the videos were produced.

Before I let myself question my loyalty to my people, I'm quitting music. I didn't do this to be by myself.

I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.

Hearing my songs in public freaks me out a bit. There was one restaurant I really liked in L.A., but I had to stop going there when they started playing my music. It felt kinda awkward.

I'm completely in love with the world but also terrified of it. It creates some overwhelming feelings. Wanting to battle out that joy and fear is part of my music.

I'd experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I'd written and recorded, but something wasn't quite right.

Without music the world will still turn, but it won't rock.

The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.

I don't listen to music when designing. We create in silence. I go through a torturous process because everything has to be precise and right.

The music takes on all different jobs and hopefully is part of telling the story. Each song has to be a story unto itself. It's a very different set of muscles.

I'm of the mind that your private life is private and you don't need to put everything out there about yourself - but on there, I describe myself as a citizen of the world, a man of music.

The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.

Every music journalist I've ever met has been stunningly beautiful.

Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey. The music of your life.

To all that he touched he gave a new meaning, a new color, a new outline, a new loveliness, and a new poignancy.

The fact remains that, if the supply of energy failed, modern civilization would come to an end as abruptly as does the music of an organ deprived of wind.

As a kid, before I could play music, I remember baseball being the one thing that could always make me happy.

I wouldn't mind producing a movie with a music storyline, but acting in one is too close to home.

While I'm playing baseball, I'm still writing songs and having tapes sent to me. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time in the whirlpool resting these tired bones, so I'll be thinking of music then.

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

I've made more than 50 records with a wide range of music. I've often veered to check something out.

I like mellow music. I like some jazz. But I'm not a big hard rock guy.

There's nothing like a music festival. People are ready to have a good time. I don't think anyone comes to a festival going, 'I'm gonna be a complete bummer today.

Music is soaking up things that I see in other people or things that go on in my life, and I put it out there in the form of a song.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.

I think listening to real classic soul material made me learn how to feel music that's sung

I love seeing the fans of the music that I make.

I don't know whether you [musician] can be all things to everybody, which is why there are different kinds of music.

I was never into smart college boy music.

I am optimistic about the future of music.

I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music.

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better.

It's strange to think that I can go places and people want to hear my music. I guess that's all I ever wanted.