Music Quotes - Page 19

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

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

I always had a repulsive sort of need to be something more than human.

Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

I don't believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work.

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It's a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together.

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

I'm gonna put a curse on you and all your kids will be born completely naked.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

It might be argued that genuine spontaneity is not really possible or desirable so long as printed scores of great works exist. All modern musicians are, for better or worse, prisoners of Gutenberg.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

You only get better by playing.

Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.

Music is the only thing that will give and give and give and not take.

Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Being a musician is a noble profession.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

I wouldn't call myself a leader. I don't want to lead people, I want to tempt them, I want to create a new world for them, just for that very small moment, when they are losing themselves in my music. I want to inspire them

If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine . . .

I feel that Christian music is a subculture directed towards the Christians. It's not really being exposed to non-Christians and it's not really created for non-Christians, so non-Christians almost never hear any of this music.