Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jeffrey Tate

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

James A. Baldwin

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.

James A. Baldwin

She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.

James A. Baldwin

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

James A. Baldwin

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.

Jacques Roumain

And at dawn, the drums still beat on the sleepless plain like an unstoppable heart.

Jacques Roumain

The old men of the village of Mahotière say that the Mistress of the Water is a mulatto woman. At midnight she comes out of the spring and sings while combing her dripping long hair, which makes a sound sweeter than a violin. It is a song of perdition for whomever hears it. There is no sign of the Cross, no "Our Father" to save him. Her curse takes him like a fish in a net and the Mistress of the Water awaits him on the edge of the spring and smiles upon him and tells him to follow her to the depths, from which he will never return.

Jackson Browne

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.

Jack Vance

Good music always defeats bad luck

George Harrison

I'll give up this sort of touring madness certainly, but music-everything is based on music. No, I'll never stop my music.

George Harrison

Barney Kessel is definitely the best guitar player in this world, or any other world.

George Harrison

I'm only myself when I have a guitar in my hands.

Gary Wright

The Internet is both great and terrible. As a source of information, a tool for delivering music and art, it's great. But spamming ads and piracy of music is terrible. It's stealing.

Gary Wright

Music's staying power is a function of how timeless the lyrics, song and production are.

Gary Burton

Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

Gary Burton

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

Freddie Hubbard

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles & Dizzy it was very difficult.

Freddie Hubbard

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

Freddie Hubbard

[Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.

Freddie Hubbard

I used to try to play like [Miles Davis], and Miles caught me copying him one night at Birdland. He said, 'Hey man, why don't you play some of your own stuff.' So, I finally did, because I had copied all his solos.

Freddie Hubbard

Dizzy used to tell me I'm playing too hard. He'd say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

Freddie Hubbard

Don't make the mistakes I made of not taking care of myself. Please, keeps your chops cool and don't overblow. If you are going to play hard, be sure to warm up. I'd get carried away trying to stay right with the momentum [of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers]. I used to try and play like Coltrane and solo for 30 or 40 choruses. It all caught up with me.

Freddie Hubbard

Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever.

Frederic Chopin

Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I've got only the keyboard in my poor head.

Frederic Chopin

Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.

Frederic Chopin

To be a great composer requires immense experience... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!

Frederic Chopin

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Freddie Mercury

If I didn't do this well, I just wouldn't have anything to do... I can't cook, and I'd be a terrible housewife.

Freddie Mercury

The reason we're successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course.

Freddie Mercury

We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear .

Freddie Mercury

I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear.

Christina Milian

I did a theatrical musical, Annie Warbucks, when I was 11. We did a tour and we stopped by Los Angeles.

Christina Aguilera

I'm very eclectic in what I like and what I listen to. But my favorite musical ever is "The Sound of Music." That was actually one that inspired me to sing.