Billy Joel Quotes - Page 8

It feels great to have a #1 album.

Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair, I told you dirty jokes until you smiled.

Streetlife serenaders Have no obligations Hold no grand illusions Need no stimulation.

Forced to recognize our inhumanity, our reason coexists with our insanity. And though we choose between reality and madness, it's either sadness or euphoria.

As human beings, we need to know that we are not alone, that we are not crazy or completely out of our minds, that there are other people out there who feel as we do, live as we do, love as we do, who are like us.

I had a melody and a rhythm and chords, but nothing to talk about. I remember reading about how the decline of the steel industry had been affecting the Lehigh Valley, and I decided that's what I was going to write the song about.

You're not the only one who's made mistakes, but they're the only things that you can truly call your own.

Know what you love and do what you love. If you don't do what you love, you're just wasting your time.

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

My friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane!

In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard.

Streetlife serenader never sang on stages, needs no orchestration, melody comes easy, need no vast arrangement to do their harmonizing.

No matter what culture you're from, everyone loves music.

One of the last times that we played in the area before I wrote "Allentown," I remember a guy coming up to us and saying, "You're never coming back here." I said, "Why do you say that?" He said, "Well, you're probably gonna become a big star. Nobody who ever becomes big comes back here." And I felt so sad for this kid, he seemed so bitter about it. I said, "Well, I'm coming back, no matter what."

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in / There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin / He says, 'Son, can you play me a memory?/ I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.

Like a boxer in a title fight, you have to walk in that ring alone.

There will be miracles After the last war is won Science and poetry rule in the new world to come Prophets and angels Gave us the power to see What an amazing future there will be

Well we're waiting here in Allentown For the Pennsylvania we never found For the promises our teachers gave If we worked hard If we behaved So the graduations hang on the wall But they never really helped us at all No they never taught us what was real

I would not leave you in your times of trouble. We never could have come this far. I took the good times, I'll take the bad times, I'll take you just the way you are.

When I see an entire community disenfranchised, it disturbs me. Not that I'm a message guy, per se. I write about people. I like to write about human beings, not crap political rhetoric. I've tried to avoid that all my life. When I wrote about soldiers in Vietnam, I wasn't trying to make a political statement. I was trying to write about how screwed things were for soldiers, and how they still are.

Musicians know all about unemployment. You're unemployed a lot, and I think there's a great deal of empathy between musicians and people who are out of work.

I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.

I don't care what consequence it brings, I have been a fool for lesser things.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity.