Famous Quotes & Sayings

Will Oldham

I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.

Will Oldham

I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation-we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this worth the striving? Would America have been America without her Negro People?

W. E. B. Du Bois

Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile-sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.

Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song.

Zola Jesus

I try to create songs that are really massive and intense, but at the same time remaining honest and raw.

Zola Jesus

The greatest benefit of being a solo performer is that it is seriously frightening, but at the same time very empowering. It's just you and the audience. All the weight is on you to deliver the songs.

Zola Jesus

I feel like humans are a disease. It's a hard thing to communicate in a pop song. I mean, who wants to hear that?

Zola Jesus

The only reason I would write a break-up song is because my own problem of allowing myself to relate to people.

Zola Jesus

A lot of times I have the song inside of me and I have to fight to get it out. I'm a very visual person, so I can see the song but I can't hear it. But I think that if your music becomes a war for it to happen, in the end there's a certain kind of aggression in the music. And I think that's a lot more interesting.

Zora Neale Hurston

From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom…It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep.

Zora Neale Hurston

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.

Zach Galifianakis

We all know how funny Morrissey is. Actually, you know what? I say that sarcastically. His songs are some of the funniest songs I've ever heard in my life. I mean, really. I mean, not that the 'Girlfriend in a Coma' is, like, really funny.

Zac Efron

I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.

Zac Efron

I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!

Zach Braff

It's a really fun hobby to set imagery to music, and finding the right songs for that. Your favorite song in the world might not work at all... for one reason or another.

Ze Frank

Words are the instruments you play to the song of your ideas, you're just playing covers.

Ziggy Marley

It's hard to say a favorite song of my father's. I listen to all his stuff - a lot of the old stuff before the '70s.

Ziggy Marley

My father's songs don't intimidate me; my father's songs are my songs. My songs are his songs. There's no intimidation.

Ziggy Marley

Some of my songs I don't do on tour because they don't work well live.

Ziggy Marley

If I'm doing a concert, and I'm having a problem with the audience... I just play a Bob Marley song, and I'm good for the rest of the night.

Zach Braff

That cyclone in Burma? That was just me doing the dance to that annoying ass song...

Yvonne Strahovski

I'm scared of karaoke. I think if I did have a go to karaoke song, it would be 'Whatta Man' by Salt-n-Pepa.

Yolanda Adams

When I write a song, it comes from the heart and is based on a specific experience. You can't really say that one experience is greater than another, because all of your experiences take you through life on this journey.

Yolanda Adams

I think more people in the mainstream, folks like Nancy Wilson and Luther Vandross, they have openly expressed their love for God, and when mainstream artists start expressing their love for God openly in their concerts and including gospel songs in their concert, and, you know, people started embracing it.

Walter Mosley

... you should wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words - so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that.

Walter Raleigh

A wandering minstrel I A thing of shreds and patches Of ballads, songs and snatches And dreamy lullaby!

W. Somerset Maugham

Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

Will Smith

Marvin Gaye said there's a song inside of me and I can't get it out. And I know it's in there, and I can feel that it's in there, and I can't get it out. There's so much that I want to say, and I haven't been able to figure out how to say it in my art. I can only say it in ham-fisted, clumsy, nonpoetic ways, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about life and talk about love and talk about pain and trials and tribulation in an artistic form.

Warren Buffett

Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy. Take advantage of compound interest and don't be captivated by the siren song of the market.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say

Will Hermes

Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, 'I'm New Here,' doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.

Will Hermes

Adele Adkins' retro-soul debut, '19', was striking less for her songs than for that voice: a voluptuous, slightly parched alto that swooped and fluttered like a Dusty Springfield student trying to upstage her teacher, or at least update the rules.