Quotes about Music

The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb

Gather up your telegrams
Your faded pictures, best laid plans
Books and postcards, 45's
Every sunset in the sky

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights
Friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place
Music, hope and amazing grace

Maybe what we leave
Is nothing but a tangled little mystery
Maybe what we take
Is nothing that has ever had a name

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry.  Words are words.  The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance.  They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that.  It's all the same.  Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics.  They are interchangeable to me.

Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that's instructive to yourself - some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn't have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that's what's happening in the song.

Contemplating the lace-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing - going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water.  Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks both in solution and in the form of mud particles, sand, pebbles, and boulders.  Rocks flow from volcanoes like water from springs, and animals flock together and flow in currents modified by stepping, leaping, gliding, flying, swimming, etc.  While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature's warm heart.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms.  The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.
And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be.
That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.

Be aroused by poetry; structure yourself with propriety, refine yourself with music.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. 

All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feeling they had of the inner-structure of Nature that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on the power of intellect; it is man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

That strain again! It had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet as it was before.

We must risk delight.  We can do without pleasure,
but not delight.  Not enjoyment.  We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.  To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.

Life without music would be an intolerable insult.

Whether you like the type of music or not,all music is good music,for it opens the heart,soul and mind of indivduals,and is the most powerful way to express yourself.

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.  I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.  And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Those with prodigious skill in music are better suited for all things.

Music is the perfect type of art.

One day without music is like one day without air, It would be the death of us.  

Music's the medicine of the mind.  

It's live music, primarily, and I think that live music is always going to float above water, and people will always be drawn to it.  I think people do get tired of things being packaged for them.  I think people do grow tired of being spoon-fed, and if it's not every generation, it's sort of every couple or every half-generation.  I feel like people go "I don't want to be told what's cool.  I want to go and find out for myself."  I mean, sure, we want to hear people be smooth and look cool, but not all the time.  You also just want to go get your head blown off by something that will never happen again.

Music became a healer for me, and I learned to listen with all my being.

The great forest, absolutely silent, save for the music of the brook, the smell of the woods, the charm of the campfire, the fragrance of the bed of boughs, all work a peace in the mind which has been accustomed for so many months to the noise and rush of the great city, the jolting of the railway train, and the smoke and dust of the locomotive.

I don't want to sound too cosmic or anything... but I think that music is a spiritual experience. ...  Music is true.  An octave is a mathematical reality.  So is a 5th.  So is a major 7th cord.  And I have the feeling that these have emotional meanings to us, not only because we're taught that a major 7th is warm and fuzzy and a diminished is sort of threatening and dark, but also because they actually do have these meanings.  It's almost like it's a language that's not a matter of our choosing.  It's a truth.  The laws of physics apply to music, and music follows that.  So it really lifts us out of this subjective, opinionated human position and drops us into the cosmic picture just like that.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Kind words are the music of the world.

After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four--

And the universe came into being.

It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles.

Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

Music is spiritual.  The music business is not.

Music my rampart, and my only one.

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide.