Music

When you are about 35 years old, something terrible always happens to music. ~~ Steve Race

Punk [rock] seemed like rock 'n' roll music utterly without the music. ~~ Steve Winwood

arly on, I accepted that once a song is pressed and it goes out to people, it's as much theirs as it is mine. Anything anyone wants to see in them is fine. ~~ Michael Stipe

I've always felt that a lot of my songs deal with spying on myself. ~~ Carly Simon

Rock is very, very important and very, very ridiculous. ~~ Pete Townshend

The end of World War II and the way the world changed in the wake of those cataclysms is what caused rock 'n' roll. It was human conflict and rebellion that created rock 'n' roll -- not the other way around. ~~ Daryl Hall

The music business was not safe, but it was fun. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway. ~~ Lionel Richie

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. ~~ Kin Hubbard

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. ~~ Groucho Marx

usic washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~~ Berthold Auerbach

Music hath charms to soothe a savage; this may be so, but I would rather try a revolver on him first. ~~ Josh Billings

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in [Bob] Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music. ~~ Lyle Lovett

Things in which mediocrity is insupportable -- poetry, music, painting, public speaking. ~~Jean de La Bruyere

In memory everything seems to happen to music. ~~ Tennessee Williams

Hell is full of musical amateurs. Music is the brandy of the damned. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

Mother cursed me with the fine ear of a musician but the hands of a plumber. ~~ Sting

Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast; unfortunately, there seem to be more savage beasts than ever before. ~~ Louis Phillips

[Song title:] I Feel so Miserable Without You, It's Almost Like Having You Here. ~~ Stephen Bishop

Canned music is like audible wallpaper. ~~ Alistair Cooke

The devil does not stay where music is. ~~ Martin Luther

Music is the shorthand of emotion. ~~ Leo Tolstoy

I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. ~~ John Adams

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you -- like music to the musician…--or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations. ~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

[John F. Kennedy's favorite lines from the musical Camelot:]
Don't let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot --
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot. ~~ Alan Lerner

I believe that music is the breath of God; I think it's a healer. ~~ Naomi Judd

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music. ~~ Mark Twain

The main purpose of rock 'n' roll is celebration of the self. And the only evil in rock 'n' roll is deliberately directed mindlessness - which is a good definition for evil in general. ~~ Daryl Hall

When Paderewski made his concert debut in St. James' Theatre in London, he was terrified as he approached the piano, observing the audience staring fixedly at him. As he settled in to play his first number, a cat that lived in the theater jumped into his lap. This so delighted the audience and so charmed and calmed the brilliant young composer and pianist that he allowed the cat to remain there purring throughout the opening etude. Until his dying day Paderewski swore that the cat got him over the first hurdle. ~~ Roger A. Caras

Music is the best means we have of digesting time. ~~ W. H. Auden

The plain fact is that music per se means nothing; it is sheer sound, and the interpreter can do no more with it than his own capacities, mental and spiritual, will allow, and the same applies to the listener. ~~ Sir Thomas Beecham

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. ~~ George Jean Nathan

When the cord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like a song. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

I've felt that the only way to survive was with dignity, pride, and courage. I heard that in certain forms of music, and I heard it most of all in the blues, because it was always an individual. It was one man and his guitar against the world. ~~ Eric Clapton

Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below. ~~ Joseph Addison

treetalk and windsong are
the language of my mother
her music does not leave me. ~~ Barbara Mahone

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. ~~ Alan Watts

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~~ Paul Simon

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense. ~~ Joseph Addison

There are no more political statements. The only thing rock fans have in common is their music. ~~ Bob Pittman

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit -- enable them to see visions and dream dreams. ~~ Eric Anderson

There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening. ~~ Pat Metheny

Magic is what we do. Music is the way we do it. ~~ Jerry Garcia

Of all musicians, flautists are most obviously the ones who know something we don't know. ~~ Paul Jennings

There's never been logic to music being forgotten, for if a song is good, it should be good all the time. You never throw away a book that's good. And music should be treated as well. ~~ Phil Everly

For most rockers, the only thing standing between them and total illiteracy is the need to get through their Mercedes-Benz owner's manuals. ~~ Garry Trudeau

People who are looking for art in rock 'n' roll or pop are looking for something that either doesn't or shouldn't exist. ~~ Billy Joel

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ~~ Walter Lippmann

It's strange. What was left of center is now the center. I guess that's why it's time for folk records again. The most punk-rock thing you could do now is make a folk record. ~~ Rick Rubin

Who wants politics in music? I find politics the single most uninspiring, unemotional, insensitive activity on this planet. ~~ Adam Ant

People deserve better. They deserve truth. They deserve honesty. The best music … is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with. ~~ Bruce Springsteen

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance -- whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played. ~~ Andre Previn

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts. ~~ Axel Munthe

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation -- what are they? They are the happiest people in the world. ~~ William Lyon Phelps

A day out-of-doors, someone I loved to talk with, a good book and some simple food and music -- that would be rest. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A path with heart will include our unique gifts and creativity. The outer expression of our heart may be to write books, to build buildings, to create ways for people to serve one another. It may be to teach or to garden, to serve food or play music. Whatever we choose, the creations of our life must be grounded in our hearts. Our love is the source of all energy to create and connect. If we act without a connection to the heart, even the greatest things in our life can become dried up, meaningless, or barren. ~~ Jack Kornfield

Care and consistency are point and counterpoint in the music of marriage. They are played in a delicate dust of mutual need. And we have got to be forever improvising on the score of who cares for whom and who is cared for at any given moment of need. Each of the players trusts the other to move in to take up the slack when one of them misses a beat. ~~ Lewis B. Smedes [Caring and Commitment]

Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever. ~~ June Masters Bacher

Melody is a form of remembrance. . . It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears. ~~ Gian Carlo Menotti

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. ~~ Igor Stravinsky

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time. ~~ La Rochefoucauld

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. ~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts -- as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare. ~~ Herbert Spencer

Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory; odors when sweet violets sicken, live within the sense they quicken. ~~ Percy Shelley

Whatever meaning "Annie's Song" had for me on a personal level, there was also a larger context … It could just as easily have been about love for a brother. Or a father. Or a friend. It could just as easily have been a prayer. ~~ John Denver

True music...must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans. My time is today. ~~ George Gershwin (see Said Who?)

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony. ~~ Benjamin Britten

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music. ~~ Aretha Franklin

Country music is three chords and the truth. ~~ Harlan Howard

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. ~~ Charlie Parker

[On 1960s pop music:] There is no other music, not in my house. ~~ The Big Chill (film, 1983)

People today are still living off the table scraps of the 60s. They are still being passed around -- the music and the ideas. ~~ Bob Dylan

Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make. ~~ David Lee Roth

The infamous Woodstock Concert of 1969 was not held in Woodstock, New York. Although the concert was to be part of an arts festival there, it was actually held in Bethel, New York, several miles and a county away. ~~ Deane Jordan [1001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up]

By the eighties, a lot of radio stations had started playing Sixties' music. They called it "classic rock," because they knew we'd be upset if they came right out and called it what it is, namely, "middle-aged person nostalgia music." ~~ Dave Barry

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time. ~~ Bonnie Raitt

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. ~~ Frank Zappa

Pop music is usually so pretentious when it tries to be political. ~~ Paul Simon

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. ~~ Woody Allen

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer. ~~ Charles F. Kettering

Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others. ~~ Jonathan Sacks

Only cat lovers know the luxury of fur-coated, musical hot water bottles that never go cold. ~~ Susanne Millen

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians. ~~ Frank Zappa

I remember the guys in the Air Force saying, "Don't step on my blue suede shoes." I thought it was a good line and told Carl [Perkins] he should put it into a song. But he wrote it all. It's his song. ~~ Johnny Cash

I think the first song I ever wrote … was called "Can't Help Thinking About Me." That's an illuminating little piece, isn't it? ~~ David Bowie

I believe it's no good to talk about your songs; it's wrong. You should leave your songs alone and let them say what they say; let people take what they want from them. ~~ Paul Simon

The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops. ~~ Robert Helpman

I don't deserve the Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But 15 years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it. ~~ Quincy Jones

I didn't realize people took songs so seriously, and it made me wonder whether I ought to consider the consequences [of what I write]. ~~ Jim Morrison

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have. ~~ Edgar Watson Howe

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture -- it's a really stupid thing to want to do. ~~ Elvis Costello

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow. ~~ Edward Hoagland

There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music. ~~ Jim Davis

When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy -- but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life. ~~ Martin Gore

So long as there's different types of music, rap will always be around. Besides, there will always be people that can't sing. ~~ Fresh Prince

I think that at U2 concerts it seems to me that the audience almost applaud themselves … When they hear songs from a few years ago, their own memories are woven into them. ~~ Bono

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted; musicians denoted; cowboys deranged; models deposed; tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed? ~~ Virginia Ostman

Architecture in general is frozen music. ~~ Friedrich von Schelling

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~~ Aldous Huxley

I'm the Connie Francis of rock and roll. ~~ Elton John

I was involved in the Great Folk Music scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on. ~~ Martin Mull

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them. ~~ Mark Twain

… a lot of music today is so serious. Lighten up! As entertainers, we're not descendants of theologians. We're descendants of court jesters. ~~ Jimmy Buffett

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. ~~ Edith Sitwell

Adjustment, that synonym for conformity that comes more easily to the modern tongue, is the theme of our swan song, the piper's tune to which we dance on the brink of the abyss, the siren's melody that destroys and paralyzes our wills. ~~ Robert Lindner

There is a lot of bad music in every age, and there is no reason why his one should be an exception. ~~ Harold C. Schonberg

[On reunion concerts:] Hell no! Everyone is either bald or dead or looks like a plum pudding. ~~ Joan Baez

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~~ Samuel Butler

The music business is strictly business. ~~ Kenny Rogers

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. ~~ Henry David Thoreau

Rock 'n' roll is simply an attitude. You don't have to play the greatest guitar. ~~ Johnny Thunders

The good composer is slowly discovered; the bad composer is slowly found out. ~~ Ernest Newman

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions, and composed our masterpieces. Never will the world know all it owes to them, nor all they have suffered to enrich us. ~~ Marcel Proust

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. ~~ Carson McCullers

Once in a lifetime a really beautiful song comes along … Until it does, I'd like to do this one. ~~ Cliff Richard

[Rock and roll] gets through to you; it got through to me, the only thing to get through to me of all the things that were happening when I was 15. ~~ John Lennon

True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt. ~~ Garth Brooks

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without words
And never stops -- at all. ~~ Emily Dickinson

America is a tune. It must be sung together. ~~ Gerald Stanley Lee

Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism. ~~ Howard Dietz

I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for. ~~ Jasper Carrott

A typical day in the life of a heavy-metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting. ~~ Billy Joel

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~~ Victor Hugo

Music is essentially useless, as is life. ~~ George Santayana

Instead of a phonograph, a lot of today's music should be played on a seismograph. ~~ Joe Moore