Music Quotes

“Music has the power to make one forget everything save those sounds that touch your heart.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Music is about time,’ I told her. ‘It is about controlling time.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Everyone prioritizes. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“Music is what is left when everyone is not around.”
― DON SANTO

“History is His story. You haven't heard my story.”
― Sun Ra

“There will be joys that quiver your leaves and betrayals that will sever your roots, poisoning the water you pull. These are the varying notes in the music of living.”
― Kira Jane Buxton

“He got the reputation for being a good musician because he drank so much that his friends had to explain him away somehow--”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours, sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition

“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming —
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.”
― Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Music And Moonlight: Poems And Songs

“I was content to shape the quiet into the structures I wanted.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong

“LOVE is... Looking Over Various Errors.”
― Lupe Fiasco

“It took only a few bars to assure her that Thomas Lynn was a very good cellist indeed. His playing had that drive to it which gave you the sense of the shape of the music opening out before him as he played. And he kept that drive and shape, whether the cello was grumbling against the piano, crisply duetting, or out on its own, coaxed into hollow golden song. That feeling of pattern being made, Polly thought, that I had in the pano. Except that this was so expert and so tried that it was hard to believe that it was being done with a musical instrument in somebody’s hands. (p. 360)”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

“Beside her, the strings were tuned. The quartet started to play. When Tom began it, gently rolling sullen, swelling notes out of the cello, she assumed it would be designed to show him as the superb cellist he was. But when Ann’s viola came mourning in, she wondered if it might be intended as a dirge. Beyond Ann, Sam’s violin sang, and Ed’s sang and soared, and the music became something else again, nearly light-hearted. Showing how much the quartet needed Tom? Polly wondered. There was no question they were a good quartet these days. They had improved almost out of mind from the afternoon Polly had spent hearing them practice in the green basement. … The music broadened and depend, put on majesty and passion, and moved onward in some way, fuller and fuller. All four of the players were putting their entire selves into it. Polly knew they were not trying to prove anything—not really. She let the music take her, with relief, because while it lasted she would not have to make a decision or come to a dead end. She found her mind dwelling on Nowhere, as she and Tom used to imagine it. You slipped between Here ad Now to the hidden Now and Here—as Laurel had once told another Tom, there was that bonny path in the middle—but you did not necessarily leave the world. Here was a place where the quartet was grinding out dissonances. There was a lovely tune beginning to emerge from it. Two sides of Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the voice that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before. That’s a discovery I must do something about, Polly thought, as the lovely tune sang out fully once and then fell away to the end, as the piece had begun, in a long, sullen cello note. And her mind was made up. (p. 399-400)”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

“Composer found himself faced with a public whose attention had to be roused and captivated by more effective means than those to which the older public had responded. Simply because he was afraid of losing contact with his audience, he developed the musical composition into a series of constantly renewed impulsed, and worked it up from one expressive intensity to another.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism

“There is a journey that all must take regardless of its direction or apparent meaning. An artist plucks out their heart, holds it forth, and be it through agony or ecstasy, is prepared to be measured for the gift that is the highest honor, to create, and therein be judged on those merits alone. And, somewhere in the skein of all creation is that which demands of those whom would aspire to create beauty and wonder, no matter the cost, because creation, all of it, is worth every ounce the pain of its birth.”
― Duane Hewitt, Diminished Fifth: Diabolus in Musica

“Turn it," Thomas said, without smiling. "Play it again.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“I think one can never be too young to develop a taste for varied musical delights.”
― Jennifer Sommer, Veneer

“Hannah had no ear for music, she thought, pulling out one of the combs. Of course, no one liked that jazz music, but Hannah ought to know enough to get some good orchestra. Jazz was terrible. Even a radio play was better than that awful boom-boom.”
― Samuel M. Steward, Angels on the Bough

“Up the street a song cloud floats by, sagging a bit, but still intact. I walk faster and catch up with it just in time to hear the ending, a symphony orchestra, the sound full and resplendent, and it is one of those times, you know those times every so often when you hear the right piece of music at the right time, and it just makes you think, This music didn't come from here, it was given, it fell from some other universe, and it reminds you of that other universe, some place you've never seen but in your mind you know is there, because you have felt it, this special universe, stranger and better than the ordinary one, and you hang on to the sound of the violins for as long as you can, savoring the feeling of that special universe and wondering if you'll ever get to go there and also wondering if maybe we don't realize it, but we're in that one already, and we have been all along.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“The brilliant execution which they presuppose in the performer has a double function: it restricts the practice of music to the expert, and it deludes the layman. In the case of the virtuoso-composers, the prototype of whom is Paganini; the dazzling style is intended above all to flabbergast the listener, but with the real masters the technical difficulty is merely the expression of an inner difficulty and complication. Both tendencies, the enlargement of the distance between the amateur and the virtuoso as well as the deepening of the gulf between lighter and more difficult music, lead to the dissolution of the classical genres. The virtuoso mode of writing inevitably atomizes the big, massive forms; the bravura piece is relatively short, sparkling, pointed. But the intrinsically difficult, individually differentiated style, based on the sublimation of thoughts and feelings, also promotes the dissolution of universally valid, stereotyped and long-winded forms.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism

“[I]n music there is no meaning, there is no explanation, there are no people, only voices, each with its own special distinctive quality, as though this is its essential quality, its essence, unadulterated, no body, no personality, yes, a kind of personality without a person, and on every record, there is an infinity of such characteristics, from another world, which you meet whenever you play the music. I never worked out what it was that possessed me when music possessed me, other than that I always wanted it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 4

“Life is a song, sing it!”
― Talina Adamo

“One night I had been listening to [Goo], downstairs with Espen, we had been smoking hash, and I was lost in the music, literally, I saw it as rooms and corridors, floors and walls, ditches and slopes, small forests between apartment blocks and railway lines, and didn't emerge from it until the song stopped, it was like drawing breath because the next minute a new song started and I was caught again.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 5

“Jika kemudian meliput konser band-band rock legendaris itu ibarat "naik haji" bagi jurnalis musik, maka Denny Sabri sudah "mabrur" berkali-kali.”
― Idhar Resmadi, Jurnalisme Musik dan Selingkar Wilayahnya

“Penulis harus mampu "membaca" bahwa musik bukan melulu perkara teknis (aransemen, komposisi, tata suara, dll), tapi juga sebuah peristiwa budaya atau jaringan artefak sosial.”
― Idhar Resmadi, Jurnalisme Musik dan Selingkar Wilayahnya

“Ulasan musik adalah salah satu contoh bagaimana selera direpresentasikan dan dimanifestasikan sebagai suatu bentuk kuasa simbolis.”
― Idhar Resmadi, Jurnalisme Musik dan Selingkar Wilayahnya

“Jadi, saya pikir selama musik masih hadir di hadapan kita untuk dinikmati, jurnalisme musik tak akan hilang. Boleh jadi, ia hanya akan berubah format dan cara untuk hadir di hadapan kita.”
― Idhar Resmadi, Jurnalisme Musik dan Selingkar Wilayahnya

“All reification is a forgetting’—making available what has passed at once makes it irretrievable. Therein lies the desperate utopia of all musical reproduction: to retrieve the irretrievable through availability. All music-making is a recherche du temps perdu.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes, a Draft and Two Schemata

“We don't need no education”
― Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd - The Wall

“La cachucha, is that for us, maestro? Will it be danced across the tottering floorboards of the cavaliers' wing, between cramped walls, blackened with smoke and greasy with grime, under its low ceiling? Curse you, the way you play!
La cachucha, is that for us, for us cavaliers? Outside the snowstorm howls. Do you mean to teach the snowflakes to dance in rhythm, are you playing for the light-footed children of the blizzard?
Female bodies, which tremble under the pulse beat of hot blood, small sooty hands, which have thrown aside the cooking pot to grasp the castanets, naked feet under tucked-up skirts, yard coated with flakes of marble, crouching gypsies with bagpipe and tambourine, Moorish arcades, moonlight and black eyes, do you have those, maestro? If not, let the fiddle rest!
Cavaliers are drying their wet clothes by the fire. Should they swirl around in their tall boots with iron-shod heels and thumb-thick soles? They have waded through the ell-deep snow the whole day to reach the bear's winter lair. Do you think they should dance in their wet, steaming homespun clothes, with the shaggy bruin as a partner?
Evening sky, glittering with stars, red roses in dark female hair, tormenting sweetness in the evening air, untaught grave in the movements, love rising out of the earth, raining from the sky, hovering in the air, do you have this, maestro? If not, why force us to long for such things?
Cruelest of men, are you sounding the attack for a tethered warhorse? Rutger von Orneclou is lying in his bed, imprisoned by gout pains. Spare him the torment of sweet memories, maestro! He too has worn a sombrero and a gaudy hairnet, he too has owned a velvet jacket and a sash with a dagger tucked in it. Spare old Orneclou, maestro!”
― Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berling's Saga