Music Quotes

Country music belongs to America.

I just wanted a style of music all my own.

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.

I like American black soul music, that was my first big enthusiasm.

I don't think I had a specific moment when I thought, "I'm not going to play music anymore." I just played less and got involved in other things.

I learned early on the value and the power of music to inspire and to drive me.

We grew up without a television, so we constantly had music playing in our house.

I like a lot of other music and listen to a lot of other music, but one of the greatest things about the Grateful Dead is they played all the time.

[Music is] so inspirational in terms of making me want to become better.

I grew up in an non-athletic family, where my parents were interested in music, in literature, in education and art.

With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs.

That's where all good music comes from, I think - anything that's likely to have an impact on pop culture comes from a point where there's no expectation of it becoming anything other than personal.

This never gets old, and when it does, I'll go do a movie. I like the fact that I can get into other projects because everything feels fresh when I come back to music.

What I see in a lot of music movies, or rock 'n' roll movies, that feature a band is that they're lip-synching.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

The idea that musicians should be talking about politics is, in some ways, quite a sixties' idea. Music no longer has a vanguard role in youth culture.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.

I am totally, absolutely romantic. When I broke up with a girl I would listen to the most heart-breaking music and make it worse. That's what girls do. I think I am a girl really.

Music is supposed to be interwoven into the fabric of society; it is not supposed to be a plaything that is there to serve the population's titillation of the moment.

I use music as some kind of weird salvation to get away from life

I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.

The music business - and I guess you could say any artistic endeavor - usually rewards those who are on the leading edge of where everything is going, but you can't be too far.

Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves.

We don't make music for people to take drugs to, we make music for people to live their life.

The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.

The music is all we care about -- so if that's bad, then we're bad.

To re-embrace what I once loved about music has been a warming process for me, because it's a good, earned feeling now.

To be able to put your arms around 24 years of music, it's really fun.

You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.

I'm prepared to spend the rest of my life playing clubs, if that means I'm playing music that I believe in.

When alternative music - which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of where white rock is headed - becomes either too cute or too manufactured, that's just really not good.

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.

Theres so much beautiful music in the world, and the kids are getting robbed.

The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

I'm really a singer, so I love songs and I love singing. I like rap music, but I didn't grow up freestyling.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

If you said good-bye to me tonight, There would still be music left to write.

When I was a young musician, the only option available to pursue secondary education in music was to attend a classical conservatory.

I can't think of one person I've ever met who didn't like some type of music.

I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

I'm writing new music all the time. I'm just not writing pop stuff. It's not my goal.

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

I always wanted to try to be a teacher even before I was in the music business. I liked history, and good teachers made an impact on me.

I'm a fan of many different styles of classical and symphonic music.

You have to let your music be true and then people who want to adopt it as that, they take it on and they love it, and it changes their world.

I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.

Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.

I love Adele and Lykke Li. I also listen to classical music as well.

There's so many songs about heartbreak that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this.