Music Quotations

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.

If music be the food of love, play on.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

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.

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

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.

I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I urge younger artists to know that you don't have to be anything you don't want. You can do whatever's comfortable for you. From the music I make, to the things I do in my life, I'm true to my R&B core. I have the capability to make pop records and crossover, but that's not my aim.

But when you get music and words together, that can be a very powerful thing.

Music's not like becoming a doctor, who can walk into a community and find people who need him.

Once you become predictable, no one's interested anymore.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Gospel music to me has always been a balm for the soul. It has been able to usher in the spirit, usher in worship, true worship and praise, healing. I find the music to be very good at healing and the passion, you know, which is a testimony being told in song.

The iPod has taken away the whole platinum record sales prospect. Sincerity and specificity are going to be the hot commodities in music. Everybody can have anything that they want, so now it gets into what specifically you have to give.

The first seven years of my life, me, my mom and dad and my four older siblings lived in a suburb of Stockholm, and my mom was very active with directing theater. So I basically grew up at the theater on the floors of the shows, so I was really surrounded with music at a young age.

I was supposed to go see Led Zeppelin when I was in, like, the 8th or 9th grade, and then John Bonham died and I never was able to. For me, music is such a huge part of my life, and I use songs like memory triggers. So a lot of my memories of being a kid and growing up are associated with different songs.

If someone asked what kind of music I play, I wouldn't say I'm a folk singer; however, if folk music means music for the people, and playing music to entertain them and share different messages, then sure, I'd like to think that I'm part folk singer.

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.

Once you've changed who you are or who you've portrayed in your music, the fans, they'll catch it... Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

It's great, the number of people that I'm reaching through the Internet - I've done some wonderful interviews - but I miss touching the bodies. I miss shaking hands, looking into people's faces and saying, 'Hello, how are you doing? Thank you for playing my music.'

I love playing video games. I love listening to music. Just surfing the web. Facebook, Twitter, keeping in touch with people from home.

Jazz music and, more specifically, jazz musicians, are my artistic heroes. I want to be the Thelonious Monk of acting. He had no concern for how well he was received. He played whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He just wasn't interested in achieving the good opinion of his audience. That's the Holy Grail of acting; of any art form.

I think I sound like a fella who's always making a plea through his music. Sort of a plea of sincerity.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.

I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.

I was a weird teenager. My mother was actually worried because I didn't have any interest in dating in my teenage years. I had all this desire to pursue my passions like ballet, then sailing, then music, so I didn't have any emptiness to fill.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.

I think that creative work, music in particular, is a conveyor of inner emotional life. I don't feel one way all the time, so I don't want my music to feel the same way all the time.

Blues is my life. It's a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do.

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

Music is that universal language which unifies the spirits of mankind.

Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

I still miss music and singing. One day, I'm going to sing with a big band.

There was a time that I was only known for being a plagiarist. It used to hurt at times because there was so much effort I was putting into music. And instead of that, it was a couple tunes that I had reproduced from folk songs to remake as film songs, which were being written about.

I grew up with music very much in my life. I achieved success by combining my training as an accountant with my family upbringing and love of music.

A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it.

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.

I thought music could take you to a place where you didn't even feel ownership of it, you just felt lucky you were there. It's like church without God, or something. It's about feeling, hope and catharsis and things that are nurturing.

I don't watch TV. In my spare time, if I have any, I want to make music.

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person.

Well you know, I've been into music my whole life, so to be able to put an album together with some of that music was awesome.

I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.

World events can shape culture. Music is either a soundtrack for or a narration of changing times. And who knows how that's going to go?

Because in classical music cello is not regarded as a popular choice, it's always playing the long, boring notes.

I love singing. It's who I am. When I act, I take a small part of myself and just magnify it, but when I'm singing, that's who I am. I don't write music, so I choose songs that I would have written.

What I loved about country music when I was a kid was the Grand Ole Opry, was 'Hee Haw,' was 360 degrees of entertainment.

I do like pop music. It's that certain thing that it gives you: the adrenaline rush, that instant gratification.

I think it's really cool to embrace the pain of something that may have hurt you and be able to express it through music.

I've always been a fan of country music. It's America's music - I love the songs, love the lyrics.

It's never too late to do anything new when it comes to music.

There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.

I love dive bars, old movie theaters, live music and good food. The simplest things in life for me are the most important.

The acting thing is the side benefit of becoming a little bit well known with my music.

When my time ends, I want people to say, 'Man her music made me smile; it just enlightened my life; it inspired me; it made me feel good every time.'

Genetically, I have tons of musical background in my life. My mother's father was a famous Weimar-era composer, Ernst Toch. My father's mother was the head of the Vienna Conservatory's piano department. It all canceled out in my case. I'm completely hopeless in music.

To me, music's something I can dance to or listen to. To write about it is always more of what the music represents, or what it reflects. Like an ideal song, to me, is a song that you can dance to, that summons up some darker and greater mystery.

The reason why Millennials are inspiring is what they give: the music they give.

I'm totally open to exploring different types of music. I just have to always remember to be true to who I am.

To be born in Wales, not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but, with music in your blood and with poetry in your soul, is a privilege indeed.

The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.

I like to focus on making the music sound simple and true, and very lush and full. I think music should take you to somewhere else where you have the space to contemplate or exercise your imagination. All the while you should be feeling real good, like when you have a delicious and decadent meal, macaroni and cheese or foie gras.

I was obsessed with David Bowie - still am. He's a babe, a total babe. His music is killer; his visuals are beautiful.

The folk music definition has changed in this fast music world and musical styles are blending really quickly.

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

I had a dream of music and art and the big city in which I would get lost, where no one would know me and I wouldn't know anyone, where I would work at some ordinary job, and if one day I got up in the morning and decided I wasn't going to go to work anymore, no one would ask questions.

There are many things I love in this world. Music, acting, and animals are at the top of that list.

I love the incredible variety of demands directing makes on you, from the entrepreneur to the hustler to the deal-maker to the writer; to directing actors and the camera and working with music, sound, marketing and promotion. It uses so many sides of your brain.

I'm not a pretty princess, and I'm aware of that, so I like music that is really intense, really bold, and characters that in a way almost have a dark side and are kind of evil because, for me, that's when I feel my strongest and fiercest, when I'm not necessarily the good girl.

When I'm skiing, I listen to electronic music. It's repetitive and let's me get into a groove and crank out the miles.

People send me CDs all the time because I love music. It's great. I listen to them in my dressing room or in my car.

Music is love, love is music, music is life, and I love my life. Thank you and good night.

In India, I have been called a 'destroyer.' But that is only because they mixed my identity as a performer and as a composer. As a composer I have tried everything, even electronic music and avant-garde. But as a performer I am, believe me, getting more classical and more orthodox, jealously protecting the heritage that I have learned.

If something happened where I couldn't write music anymore, it would kill me. It's not just a job. It's not just a hobby. It's why I get up in the morning.

You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead.