Song Quotes - Page 186

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

My older brother was involved in the folk movement. We would gather every weekend in Washington Park. The folk songs were so important to my reality.

I had wanted to say that my song was far too painful to sing.

I'd love to be an artist that's multifaceted. At the moment, I am not. But wouldn't that be cool if I was like, 'Yeah, let me pull out my guitar and play you a song.' I would adore that. I am so far not gifted in that way. But I am a very hard worker and a very determined person, so who knows?

Food binds us to our roots as strongly as any song or poem. Many of us have learned more about our ancestors in the kitchen than we ever will from a book.

Now no one will listen to songs. The prophesied days have begun. Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its wonder, Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.

God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son.

I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.

I enjoy singing the songs a certain way, but I don't even know how the writing even began. To me, it's work that is kind of invisible; it's a weird kind of work to have because you're not working, but it's not not work. Formulating your thoughts and making a melody that's catchy enough for people to listen to what you're saying is really hard!

A popular song is one that makes us all think we can sing.

There are beautiful sounds in rock. Very lazy, dreamlike noises. You can forget about the lyrics in most songs. Just dig the noise, and you've got your sound...We're musical primitives.

For a moment there I convinced myself I had my back against a wall, and suddenly the only wall I find my back against is that of a 10 by 10 writing shack in Glendale, where the summer days average between 90 and 100 and each song can be quantified in the sweat it took to write it. There is no ac in hell, and sometimes you've got to get down to get up. The train is gaining speed I should think.

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

Love isn't always magic. But if I offered my body to the magician, if I told him to cut me in half so after that I could come to you whole and ask for you back would you listen for this dark alley love song? For the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies?

A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.

We had various kinds of tape-recorded concerts and popular music. But by the end of the flight what we listened to most was Russian folk songs. We also had recordings of nature sounds: thunder, rain, the singing of birds. We switched them on most frequently of all, and we never grew tired of them. It was as if they returned us to Earth.

Christina Aguilera's 'Stripped' had a lot of good songs. It's my range, so I use it to warm up a lot.

But to make a holiday record that involves favorite American songs and then also get to sing about Jesus birth, it just seemed like a real easy, subtle way to combine a couple of things that I love.

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting. And music moves your soul, so music is the source of the most intense emotions you can feel. When you hear a song and you're acting it's incredible. But when you're singing a song and you're acting it's even more incredible.

When I see something I end up making a song about it and that's the way it is. There have been plenty of times when I've been in the studio and they were like, "Hey, why don't you make a song about such and such," and I just can't. I've gotta have it in my heart.

It was an honor to work with Samantha Morton on this Casablanca-esque, silent-film-esque, Americana photobooth Woolworth's hay day period piece of surrealism/ realism/ story time tell-tale-ism, black and white 35 mm film, washed in strange light, over this love hate tune, heartbreak song, life-goes-on lullaby, The Last Goodbye. It's a doorway into the future of the fatal past-tense. Get it?

Whenever I've chosen a song because it's clever, it's always turned out to be a mistake.