Music Quotes

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.

I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think.

Music rearranges your molecular structure.

All music is important if it comes from the heart.

Your life is worth much more than gold.

I woke up this morning, smiled at the rising sun.

All God's Chillun got Rhythm.

But right now we have an advantage of being the number one in music.

You've got to care about the music...You'd better not be doing it for the publicity, the fame or the money. And you'd sure better not be doing it because it's a way to make a living, 'cause that ain't always going to be easy. You got to believe it, believe in the music. You got to mean it.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I don't want to give any advice to a 19-year-old, because I want a 19-year-old to make mistakes and learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes.

I think the labyrinth is an interesting metaphor for our lives as musicians. We're always being drawn toward the center of it because that's where the mystery is. What is music? It's a journey.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

He who sings frightens away his ills.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.

Have you ever heard somebody sing some lyrics that you've never sung before, and you realize you've never sung the right words in that song? You hear them and all of a sudden you say to yourself, 'Life in the Fast Lane?' That's what they're saying right there? You think, 'why have I been singing 'wipe in the vaseline?' how many people have heard me sing 'wipe in the vaseline?' I am an idiot.

Music waves eternal wands,-- Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

to deny that music powerfully influences our thoughts and conduct is either ignorant or a deliberate lie. Anyone who listens to music has been moved by it. It's music, that's the point.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope.

I go to a very visual place when I'm singing. It's very cinematic and I get this feeling of space. I love when music does that.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

If I practice Cherokee along with backing tracks would it be Chereoke?

A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

And in their motions harmony divine So smoothes her charming tones, that God's own ear Listens delighted.

I conclude that the musical notes and rhythms were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.

Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don't think it's given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely. I'm going to make a very bold statement: Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, and, as with living souls, have been inform'd, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.

Music the fiercest grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm. Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above.

You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.

We're running into a lot of new problems today because of what we emphasize in this culture. The word 'success' to the average person means earning a lot of money and having a home, two cars, children in college. Success to me is entirely different to what success is to the average person.  Success is being a successful human being in terms of pursuing what you believe in. If you believe in making paintings, writing poetry, writing music. If this is what you really want, you're successful to yourself. But to be successful to your culture means to sell yourself short of what you really want

I am comforted by the assurance that there will be beautiful music in heaven, and for that I am most grateful.

Music can act upon our senses to produce or induce feelings of reverence, humility, fervor, assurance, or other feelings attuned to the spirit of worship.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices.