Music Quotes

“Laughter is the music of the deep cosmos connecting all human beings that says all the things mere words cannot.”
― David Yoon, Frankly in Love

“No one loves me! Boo hoo! Guess what? We play fucking metal! I don't want to sing about your sad feelings! I want dragons.”
― Grady Hendrix, We Sold Our Souls

“I can't believe that after a lifetime of playing metal, it turns out the world is a shitty country song.”
― Grady Hendrix, We Sold Our Souls

“We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.”
― Bruce Springsteen

“IF IT WASN'T FOR
MUSIC
I WOULD HAVE AMNESIA!
MY MEMORIES LIVE IN THE
MUSIC!

#HOPENATION”
― Qwana M. "BabyGirl" Reynolds-Frasier

“I learned that my boom box was awesome at recording, but I didn't know my soul was also good at it and that my heart would remember all the things that would ever break it. Most recordings have a way of fading over time and losing their quality, but the moments that become the record our souls keep manage to stay so vivid.”
― Amena Brown, How to Fix a Broken Record: Thoughts on Vinyl Records, Awkward Relationships, and Learning to Be Myself

“I never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears teased with measured noises,” said Mr Casaubon.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Only Mr. Hosokawa and the priest completely understood the importance of the music. Every note was distinct. It was the measurement of the time which had gotten away from them. It was the interpretation of their lives in the very moment they were being lived.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express - Nick Klezek”
― Nick Klezek

“Those around me persist in not understanding that I have never been able to live in a real world of people and things. And that is why I have this irrefutable need to escape and become involved in adventures which seem inexplicable because they involve a man no one recognizes. And perhaps that is what is best in me! Besides, an artist by definition is a man accustomed to dreams and who lives among phantoms. . . . How could it be expected that this same person would be able to follow in his daily life the strict observance of traditions— laws and other barriers erected by a hypocritical and cowardly world. (Letter from Claude Debussy to Jacques Durand)”
― Eric Frederick Jensen, Debussy

“Everybody works according to his ability, some doing more, some doing less, but everyone ought to know whether he is doing good or harm. Artists are not released from that obligation, especially as there are no works of art which do neither harm nor good. If a book, a picture or a melody is accepted by a reader, a spectator or a listener, it means that the reader, spectator or listener has had his emotions stirred; and emotions must be either harmful or useful. They cannot be neutral.”
― Sergei Obraztsov, My Profession

“All things make music with their lives, as John Muir said.”
― Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary

“We were ready to rock out and we waited and waited and finally it was our turn ... there were a half million people asleep. These people were out. It was sort of like a painting of a Dante scene, just bodies from hell, all intertwined and asleep, covered with mud. And this is the moment I will never forget as long as I live: A quarter mile away in the darkness, on the other edge of this bowl, there was some guy flicking his Bic, and in the night I hear, "Don't worry about it, John. We're with you." I played the rest of the show for that guy.

—John Fogerty recalling Creedence Clearwater Revival's 3:30 a.m. start time at Woodstock.”
― Hank Bordowitz, Bad Moon Rising: The Unofficial History of Creedence Clearwater Revival

“She heard songs on the wind, rhythms on the rain, and hope in the beat of a butterfly’s wing.”
― Cerrie Burnell, Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella

“You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love...”
― Robert Palmer

“One of the things that all great composers have in common with very few exceptions is, they created a very large amount of music.”
― R.A. Delmonico

“The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions. But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold—and yet if you’d never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn’t believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

“Music is the audible version of a feeling”
― Syed Sharukh

“Too many people think speed is the hallmark of a good musician. It’s understandable.… But how quickly you can finger notes is the smallest part of music the real key is timing. It’s like telling a joke. Anyone can remember the words. Anyone can repeat it. Making someone laugh requires more than that. Telling a joke faster doesn’t make it funnier. As with many things, hesitation is better than hurry. This is why there are so few true musicians. A lot of folks can sing were so out of tune on official. A music box can play a song flawlessly again and again. But knowing the notes isn’t enough. You have to know how to play them. Speed comes with time and practice, but timing you are born with. You have it or you don’t.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I think a band is defined more by what they say "no" to than what they say "yes" to – and to a degree, an individual human being as well. The easy thing to do is to say yes, especially if there's a great deal of money involved.”
― Brian Molko

“Nick Klezek Recording Company - Chicago

Life is a song, love is the music”
― Nick Klezek

“Music is the road to the soul”
― Syed Sharukh

“But did he then love God, or was it only the music, as an impudent priest said to him one day in jest, without thinking of the unhappiness which his quip might cause in him? Anybody else would not have paid any attention to it, and would not have changed his mode of living--(so many people put up with not knowing what they think!) But Christophe was cursed with an awkward need for sincerity, which filled him with scruples at every turn. And when scruples came to him they possessed him forever.”
― Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, Vol. 1

“I feel like the soundtrack to Silent Hill is my personality through music”
― Dean Mackin

“Music can be a very effective weapon in the war against racism.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Punk’ was the only time I fitted in. Just one tiny sliver of time where it was acceptable to say what you thought.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“– Rock is dead, but pop will live forever. Addio, Mista.”
― Shohtaroh Miya, Le Bizzarre Avventure di JoJo - Golden Heart Golden Ring

“Music is like a light spring breeze. You feel it all over your skin, it caresses your face, it inspires you to new achievements and charges you with new life. It is airy and practically illusory, but your soul sings at its first rush.as I called it".”
― Elena Paolino, Valencia in Bloom

“Like I said, so what?’

‘I think you’d like Miles Davis.’ Sunglasses laughed at the joke. Tatum didn’t get it, but she felt they were toying with her like cats pulling strands from a ball of wool.

‘Never fucking heard of him. Like I said, so what?”
― Jim Lowe, New Reform

“A song with lyrics is all of it, don’t you think? Poetry plus all the wordless feelings in the music itself. Complex things, ideas are communicated without words. The instrumental part can make the spoken part ironic—like when the lyrics touch on love, but the accompaniment is loud and angry. I love that.”
― Penny Reid