Musicians Quotes

Most popular musicians quotes

Show me an orchestra that likes its conductor and I'll show you a lousy conductor.

music

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.
Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad.
You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down . . . some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today. So that when it's all gone, people will be able to go to the artwork of the time and get some sense of what at fell like to be alive in this year. - Aaron Copland quote.
You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down . . . some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today. So that when it's all gone, people will be able to go to the artwork of the time and get some sense of what at fell like to be alive in this year.
Ah Mozart! He was happily married.. but his wife wasn't. - Victor Borge quote.
Ah Mozart! He was happily married.. but his wife wasn't.
I like Beethoven, especially the poems.
Music is not written in red, white and blue; it is written with the heart's blood of the composer.
Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain quote.
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

music

Chaos is a friend of mine. - Bob Dylan quote.
Chaos is a friend of mine.

chaos

Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer.
Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one. - Duke Ellington quote.
Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.

music

Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood.

adolescence

The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun. - Ludwig van Beethoven quote.
The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

pride artists

Being a blues singer is like being black two times. - B. B. King quote.
Being a blues singer is like being black two times.

blues singing

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline. - Duke Ellington quote.
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.
Duke Ellington Duke’s Diary: The Life of Duke Ellington, 1950–1974

deadlines

A musician, if he's a messenger, is like a child who hasn't been handled too many times by man, hasn't had too many fingerprints across his brain. - Jimi Hendrix quote.
A musician, if he's a messenger, is like a child who hasn't been handled too many times by man, hasn't had too many fingerprints across his brain.
Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.
What we play is life. - Louis Armstrong quote.
What we play is life.

music

I want to seize fate by the throat. - Ludwig van Beethoven quote.
I want to seize fate by the throat.
Once we—meaning Black performers—crossed the line, we could see our remnant shadows in the best of them!  Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, and Bruce Springsteen for openers, and then all the thousands who followed in their wake who emerged from the great encompassing Black Shadow of American culture.
James Brown I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul
I release feelings inside me through my songs.  I take some of the sadness, some of the heartache, and turn it out.  I'm able to stave off the severity.  By expressing myself in music, I can soften the blow.  But those melodies and rhythms can only do so much. - Ray Charles quote.
I release feelings inside me through my songs.  I take some of the sadness, some of the heartache, and turn it out.  I'm able to stave off the severity.  By expressing myself in music, I can soften the blow.  But those melodies and rhythms can only do so much.
Ray Charles Brother Ray: Ray Charles’ Own Story
I opened the door for a lot of people and they just ran through and left me holding the knob.
It's not me.  It's the songs.  I'm just the postman.  I deliver the songs. - Bob Dylan quote.
It's not me.  It's the songs.  I'm just the postman.  I deliver the songs.
Bob Dylan No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan
I don't write jazz, I write Negro folk music. - Duke Ellington quote.
I don't write jazz, I write Negro folk music.
It's a folksinger's job to comfort the disturbed, and to disturb the comfortable. - Woody Guthrie quote.
It's a folksinger's job to comfort the disturbed, and to disturb the comfortable.
I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.  If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music. - Billie Holiday quote.
I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.  If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
I've learned to live with my rage.   In some ways, it's my rage that keeps me going.  Without it, I would have been whipped long ago. With it, I got a lot more songs to sing.
Etta James Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story

rage

When I write a song, it's like a child to me.
I am the architect of rock and roll!  I am the originator!

rock & roll

I think all my albums are sort of emotional postcards of where I am in my life. - Sarah McLachlan quote.
I think all my albums are sort of emotional postcards of where I am in my life.
I need to play the piano every day.  It's like, some people have a glass of wine, I go play the piano, and it just calms me right down. - Sarah McLachlan quote.
I need to play the piano every day.  It's like, some people have a glass of wine, I go play the piano, and it just calms me right down.
Music is my church.  It's been my comfort and salvation, and it's always been there for me, like a true friend.  It's shown what it's like to be part of something bigger than myself.  Because of music, my life has deeper meaning, and a powerful sense of purpose.  Music just makes our world so much better. - Sarah McLachlan quote.
Music is my church.  It's been my comfort and salvation, and it's always been there for me, like a true friend.  It's shown what it's like to be part of something bigger than myself.  Because of music, my life has deeper meaning, and a powerful sense of purpose.  Music just makes our world so much better.
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

rock & roll

I hang my laundry on the line when I write. - Joni Mitchell quote.
I hang my laundry on the line when I write.
My family consists of pieces of work that go out into the world.  Instead of hanging around for nineteen years they leave the nest early. - Joni Mitchell quote.
My family consists of pieces of work that go out into the world.  Instead of hanging around for nineteen years they leave the nest early.
We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves.
Music is spiritual.  The Music Business is not.
Time has passed through me and become a song. - Holly Near quote.
Time has passed through me and become a song.
Holly Near Fire in the Rain…Singer in the Storm

time

Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel.
My voice had a long, nonstop career.  It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do.  It can't.

retirement

Armstrong is to music what Einstein is to physics and the Wright Brothers are to travel.
Mick's genius was in his lyrics, but his great talent has always been artifice, inflation and swagger and gradually he developed his by now well-known pneumatic personality, a flexible and cartoon-like envelope that eventually became his all-purpose self.
Miles cried like a singer, and Billie sang like an instrumentalist, everything they did was wrapped in the blues.
She's a gay man trapped in a woman's body.
The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in a car with my mother listening to WMCA and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked in the door to your mind: Like a Rolling Stone. - Bruce Springsteen quote.
The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in a car with my mother listening to WMCA and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked in the door to your mind: Like a Rolling Stone.
Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. - John Steinbeck quote.
Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings.