“if only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away.”

—  Elizabeth Wurtzel , book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "if only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away." by Elizabeth Wurtzel?
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel 51
American author and journalist 1967–2020

Related quotes

Claude Debussy photo

“Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Debussy (1989) by Paul Holmes, p. 36
Context: Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear.”

Maurice Jarre (1924–2009) French composer

This quote was actually crafted by University College Dublin student Shane Fitzgerald. Shortly after Jarre's death, Fitzgerald uploaded https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maurice_Jarre&type=revision&diff=280558491&oldid=280527998 the false quote to Wikipedia to test "how our globalised, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news," according to the Associated Press. "The sociology major's made-up quote…flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper websites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first. A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an email and the corrections began." The Guardian and The Herald "are among the only publications to make a public mea culpa," the Associated Press continues. See " Student hoaxes world's media with fake Wiki quote http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/student-hoaxes-worlds-media-with-fake-wiki-quote/2009/05/12/1241893953955.html," The Sydney Morning Herald (12 May 2009).
Misattributed

“When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.”

Elin Hilderbrand (1969) American writer

Source: Barefoot

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Man's bodily functions moved only toward death, but the mind could continue to enrich itself even as everything else embraced entropy.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Richter 10

Source: 1990s, Richter 10 (1996), Chapter 18, “Hidden Faults” (p. 323)

“If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Si pudiera dejar todo como está, sin mover ni una estrella, ni una nube. ¡Ah, si pudiera!
Voces (1943)

Pierce Brown photo

“Only humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander

Milla Jovovich photo

“Music for me is something I prefer to keep away form the whole business part of my life.”

Milla Jovovich (1975) Ukrainian-born american model and actress

Interview 2
Context: Music for me is something I prefer to keep away form the whole business part of my life. I feel like everything I do, in a way, has some sort of business around it. So with my music I can have my privacy. If people don’t have to pay for it then I think they can be a little more open to new ideas.

Philip Pullman photo

“Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.”

Philip Pullman book Lyra's Oxford

Lyra's Oxford (2003)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Boris Vian photo

“There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.”

Boris Vian (1920–1959) French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer

Related topics