Quotes about music

A collection of quotes on the topic of dance, music, likeness, people.

Best quotes about music

“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Conversations (January 1804)

“Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

“Music is the strongest form of magic.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

“Love is friendship set to music.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ich habe keine besondere Begabung, sondern bin nur leidenschaftlich neugierig. <br class="br">Letter to Carl Seelig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Seelig (11 March 1952), Einstein Archives 39-013 <br class="br">1950s

“The only truth is music.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

“Music is the space between the notes.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving (2001) by Jonathan G. Koomey, p. 96; since at least 2010 similar statements are also sometimes attributed to Mozart, and a similar remark, apparently one of Ben Jonson, is quoted in "Notes to Cynthia's Revels, in The Works of Ben Jonson: With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir (1875), edited by William Gifford, Vol. 2, in notes to p. 223, on p. 551: Division, in music, is "the space between the notes of music, or the dividing of the tones."
Unsourced variants:
Music is the silence between the notes.
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them.
Variant: Music is the space between the notes.

“When words leave off, music begins.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 343

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Musik höhere Offenbarung ist als alle Weisheit und Philosophie.
http://books.google.com/books?id=W2k6AAAAcAAJ&q=%22Musik+h%C3%B6here+Offenbarung+ist+als+alle+Weisheit+und+Philosophie%22&pg=PA193#v=onepage
As reported by Bettina von Arnim in a letter to Goethe, 28 May 1810.
Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde: Seinem Denkmal, Volume 2, Dümmler, 1835, p. 193.
Variant: Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Marilyn Manson quote: “Music is the strongest form of magic.”

Johann Sebastian Bach quote: “I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”

+ 4 quotes

Green Day quote: “Punk is not just the sound, the music, punk is a lifestyle.”

Karl Lagerfeld quote: “Music gives color to the air of the moment.”

Heinrich Heine quote: “When words leave off, music begins.”

Matthew Bellamy quote: “I prefer music that invents a universe. ”

Quotes about music

“Shout out to everyone makin' my beats, you helpin' me preach This music's the only thing keepin' the peace when I'm fallin' to pieces”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song Star Shopping, Album: LiL PEEP; PART ONE

Peace

“Because it’s the music that engenders the expression, artistry, and technique that is figure skating, I think that music and figure skating are essentially one and the same. [...] It’s my raison d'être. It’s the reason I skate.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Other quotes, 2020
Original: (ja) そこに音楽があるから、フィギュアスケートっていう表現だったり、芸術だったり、技術っていうものがそこに生まれてくるのであって、音楽とフィギュアスケートっていうのがほぼイコールだと僕は思ってます。で、僕にとっては… なんて言うか、生きがいです。フィギュアスケートをやる理由です。
Source: Hanyu in an interview from 2019 about the meaning of the music, aired 28 March 2020 in フィギペディア～2019-2020シーズン特別編 (Figurepedia 2019-2020 season special edition) on TV Asahi.

Thinking

““I believe – and this is the case not only for figure skating but for other forms of art including ballet and musicals as well – that this artistry is very much based on having the correct technique and a strong foundation at the core of everything. It is upon these that the artistry is built, and without that strong foundation and that basis in technique, it is not possible to have that full artistry required as well.””

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Source: Original: (ja) たとえばバレエとかミュージカルとかもそうですけれども、芸術というのは、明らかに正しい技術、徹底された基礎によって裏付けされた表現力、芸術であって、それが足りないと芸術にはならないと僕は思っています。

Source: Interview at the Foreign Correspondence Club of Japan from 27 February 2018
https://quotepark.com/authors/yuzuru-hanyu/

Art, Strong

“Struck intensely tonight by the thought that we live in a great age. We can make music, food, pictures, art, & love with unbelievable unprecedented freedom. It's all there, there for the taking & the making, all the time.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Love, Age, Food, Art

“She helped me feel like I could take risks with the music, which you’re often told not to do. When you watch her, you see that it makes a difference. From now on, I am not going to be afraid to individualize my performances to the max. I won’t be afraid of liberties, if the score permits them. I know I can do it.”

Megan Marie Hart (1983) American opera singer

on Marilyn Horne's influence; 2005, as quoted by Zachary Lewis https://solokeyboard.typepad.com/Music2005Final.doc and edited into the Oberlin Review article The Marilyn Horne Experience http://www2.oberlin.edu/con/connews/2006/of_note.html#3

Making love, Feeling, Help

“The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Silence

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

“Mozart didn't need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Mozart brauchte kein Programm für seine Musik. Er musizierte und sang mit der göttlichen Leichtigkeit eines Kindes.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Light

“If you don't like this, I'll stop writing music.”

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) Italian composer

Se questa non piace, non voglio più scrivere di musica.
Quoted in: Michael Talbot (1978) Vivaldi, p. 90
An ironic note written upon an aria score of his opera Orlando Furioso (1727).

“Music makes things hurt less.”

Tyler Joseph (1988) American singer-songwriter and record producer

Hurt

“I didn’t grow up in a man’s man world. I grew up with my mum and my sister. But I definitely think in the last two years, I’ve become a lot more content with who I am. I think there’s so much masculinity in being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be feminine, and I’m very comfortable with that. Growing up you don’t even know what those things mean. You have this idea of what being masculine is and as you grow up and experience more of the world, you become more comfortable with who you are. Today it’s easier to embrace masculinity in so many different things. I definitely find – through music, writing, talking with friends and being open – that some of the times when I feel most confident is when I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable. It’s something that I definitely try and do.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

In conversation with Timothée Chalamet for i-D Magazine (2 November 2018) https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/evwwma/harry-styles-interviews-timothee-chalamet-photos

World, Feeling, Confidence, Idea

“No matter what these people say about me, my music does not glorify any image, my music is spiritual if you listen to it. It's all about emotion, it's all about life.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Life, People

“Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

As spoken to Michael Kelly, from Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, of the King's Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including a period of nearly half a century; with Original Anecdotes of many distinguished Personnages, Political, Literary, and Musical (London, Henry Colburn, 1826; digitized 2006), 2nd ed., vol. I (p. 225) http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00439352&id=ph3XEMzGt5YC&pg=RA2-PA225&lpg=RA2-PA225&dq=%22Melody+is+the+essence+of+music%22&hl=en

Horse

“I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Money

“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant: There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Life, Cats

“Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.”

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist

Love, Life, Beauty, Heart

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

World, Sense, Memory, Time

“I just like having fun. It's a very good release, rock music, but you know you say that I am a different person on stage and that same thing could be said of anyone going out to do his job. It's my work, and I'm very serious about it, getting it right - when we began, we approached it the way we did because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said either take it on as a serious commodity or don't do it at all.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_05-02-1981_-_Melody_Maker.

Way, Personality

“Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.”

Alan Rickman (1946–2016) English film, television and stage actor

Interview: Alan Rickman on "Nobel Son" http://www.ifc.com/2008/12/alan-rickman-on-nobel-son by Aaron Hillis, IFC.com (4 December 2008)

Books, World, Change

“Music is something everyone on Earth can share. Music is meant to heal us, to bring us together, to make us happy.”

Ariana Grande (1993) American singer-songwriter

Twitter statement on the Manchester terrorist attack https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/868164986887176192 (26 May 2017)

Happiness

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Sadness, Laughter, Fight

“For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1984
Context: On albums and commercialism: "For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism... I don’t think it’s possible to guarantee commercial success for an album anyway, because nobody really knows what is commercial and what isn’t. Even if I went out of my way to make an album that was more accessible to the public, that would not guarantee its commercial success".

Way, Appearance, Time

“Music to me is the air I breathe it's the blood that pumps through my veins that keeps me alive”

Green Day

“I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

God

“The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Art, Way, Feeling

“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best…”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Packard Goose"
"Joe's Garage Acts II & III" (1979)
Variant: Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.

Love, Wisdom, Truth, Beauty

“I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

“I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by Leonard Liebling in The Musical Courier, 1939; cited from Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) p. 351.

World, Way, Feeling, Effort

“Words suck. I mean, every thing has been said. I can't remember the last real interesting conversation I've had in a long time. Words aren't as important as the energy derived from music, especially live.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals

Time

“I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in Melody Maker (1991-09-14).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Art, Guy, Fight

“Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Tear, Heart

“Nothing is more difficult than talking about music: if it is a prickly business for musicians, it is almost impossible for anyone else—the strongest, subtlest minds go astray.”

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era

Source: “L’illusion wagnérienne”, Portraits et souvenirs, Société d’édition artistique, 1899, 206‒220

Business

“Measure a man by his actions fully, from the beginning to the end. Don't take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I'm about, because you know better than that.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Life

“Live your life, listen to your music way to loud, be crazy and as different as you want to be and always remember you are not alone.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Life, Way

“Music is a safe kind of high.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

“Those who dance appear insane to those who cannot hear the music.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Misattributed
First recorded appearance: Germaine de Staël's On Germany (1813). ". . . sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane." There are several other pre-Nietzsche examples, indicating that the phrase was widespread in the nineteenth-century; it was referred to in 1927 as an "old proverb".

Appearance, Dance

“Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

As reported by Elizabeth Brentano (Bettina) in a letter to Goethe, 27 May 1810.
Quoted in Edwin Burgum The new criticism (1930), p. 179

World, Knowledge

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Variant: One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Pain, Feeling, Sad

“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Love, Star, Silence, Parting

“Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Source: movie Amadeus (1984)

Forgiveness

“Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana’ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Pain, World, Freedom, Suffering

“Punk is not just the sound, the music, punk is a lifestyle.”

Green Day

Source: By Green Day American Idiot (Tab) [Paperback]

“In memory everything seems to happen to music.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom (As Narrator Scene One)
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Memory

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Books, Wine, Weather

“Somebody that's not real. They go in the studio and all of the sudden become hard, when they used to do dance music.”

Eazy-E (1963–1995) American rapper and producer

On Studio Gangsters
1990s

Dance

“Jocks have completely taken over music… And just to get back at them, I’m going to start playing basketball.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in Musician (1993-10).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

“I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) Russian composer

Diary entry for October 9, 1886, quoted in Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective (1953), p. 73.

“For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray. And it's in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 94
Testimony (1979)

People, Age, Thinking

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.”

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) American jazz saxophonist and composer

As quoted in Bird : The Legend Of Charlie Parker (1977) by Robert George Reisner, p. 27

Wisdom, Art

“The most delightful of all music, that of your own praises.”

Xenophon book Hiero

Hiero, ch. 3, as translated by Richard Graves in The Whole Works of Xenophon (1832) p. 626).

“I like playing music because it's a good living and I get satisfaction from it. But I can't feed my family with satisfaction.”

James Hetfield (1963) American musician, songwriter and record producer

Playboy, April 2001

Family

“Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Date unknown, but appears on Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

People, Art, Way, Thinking

“Honestly, music is an expression, and if you will be that voice for these girls, there are some people that feel this. This is universal.”

Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress

People, Feeling, Girl, Universe

“Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in M.E.A.T (1991-09).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

“The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Death

“Leroy Anderson is an American original - direct, honest, personal, idiosyncratic, and free of pretension. His music is directed to, and reflective of, the American soul.”

John Williams (1932) American composer, conductor and pianist

John Williams, conductor laureate, Boston Pops Orchestra, Leroy Anderson Square Dedication, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 17, 2003.
Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/07.17/12-anderson.html

Soul, Personality

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”

Axel Munthe (1857–1949) Swedish physician

Source: supanet.com/find/famous-quotes-by/axel-munthe/a-man-can-stand-a-lot-as-fqb50991/

Pain, Feeling, Sad

“I think they’ll use sounds and tones and music and use it in their virtual reality machines. And just listen to it that way and get the same emotions from it. And then go to a party. There’ll be a virtual reality machine there with a whole bunch of headphones and if you wanna talk to people and listen to the virtual reality machine you can do that and go into the other bedroom and fuck and drink and… but actually I think virtual reality machines will get you high. Technology will be that good. And then there’ll be like virtual reality junkies lying there dead on their couch from OD’ing.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

People, Way, Lying, Drink

“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Life, World, Sadness, Fashion

“There is no art more akin to mysticism than architecture. Abstract, geometrical, musical and yet dumb, passionless, it depends entirely upon symbolism, form and suggestion. Simple lies, and the harmonious combination and numerical relations between these, present something mysterious and at the same time incomplete.”

Alexander Herzen book My Past and Thoughts

My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

Art, Relation ships, Time, Dependency

“I like people to go away from a Queen show feeling fully entertained, having had a good time. I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film - after that, they can go away and say that was great, and go back to their problems. I don't want to change the world with our music. There are no hidden messages in our songs, except for some of Brian's.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981).

People, World, Feeling, Problem

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Feeling, Communication

“Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Soul, Night, Dead

“Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Religion

“music's a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

“Who hears music feels his solitude
Peopled at once.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Balaustion's Adventure, line 323 (1871).
Source: The complete poetical works of Browning

People, Feeling, Solitude

“The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

Question

“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Heart

“What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Variant: All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

Singing, Horse

“When I’m old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

Painting, Housing, Sea, Cooking

“Music… can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Communication

“Wilderness. The word itself is music.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk

Art, Literature, Joy

“If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?”

Zeno of Citium (-334–-263 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.

Art, Way, Birth, Knowledge

“The biggest thing has been realizing how much people really do love the early Sabbath music. People have said it in the past but I've never really believed them before. I remember years ago when Metallica opened up for me, I went backstage and they were playing old Black Sabbath albums and I thought they were taking the piss! They said, 'No, we really love Sabbath.' I couldn't see that at the time--because towards the end of my time with Sabbath 20 years ago I thought what we were doing was boring and stupid, because we were boring and stupid, totally sick of what we were doing and totally out of our brains with drink or drugs when we were playing it.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Launch.com, November 2, 2000

Love, People, Stupidity, Drink

“Peace is the music of every soul. Our glory lies in understanding, listening and honoring that music.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Peace, Soul, Understanding

“Especially dangerous on the musical front in the present class war.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

An official Soviet verdict on Rachmaninoff's music, delivered in 1931; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Oxford Companion to Music, 5th edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1944) p. 775.
Criticism

War

“I see every director as a different brand. That way, it’s easy for me to compartmentalise my work. So I can easily switch from one film to the other and refresh myself when I hit a mental block. I don’t want my music to sound like a pastiche of other works. So I stop listening to my songs once the audio for a film is released. When I unwind, it’s usually with jazz.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Way

“A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.”

Jeff Tweedy (1967) musician

Interviewed in 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html

Art, Change

“I could express my feelings more easily if they could be put into the notes of music, but as the very best concert would not cover my affection for you, dear daddy, I must use the simple words of my heart, to lay before you my utmost gratitude and filial affection”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in Chopin's Letter.
Source: Chopin's Letter (1988) by Henryk Opieński,E. L. Voynich, p. 4

Feeling, Heart, Gratitude

“I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.

Women, Beauty, Way, Strong

“Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!”

Georges Bizet (1838–1875) French composer

Starement of 3 August 1867, as quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 115

Beauty, Art

“… I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in "Headbanger's Ball" (10 December 1996), MTV Europe.
1990s

People, Thinking, Painting

“The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Extract from an interview by James Francis Cooke, as given in the 1999 edition of Great Pianists on Piano Playing (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999) p. 217.

Life, World, Education, Time

“Sure, Kill Bills a violent movie. But it's a Tarantino movie. You don't go to see Metallica and ask the fuckers to turn the music down.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Quentin Tarantino on media criticisms of violence in his movies.

“Music has been my outlet, my gift to all of the lovers in this world. Through it — my music, I know I will live forever.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On his musical work
Ebony interview (2007)

World, Lovers

“No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 4.

People, Way

“I can respect the artistic aim of a composer if he arrives at the so-called modern idiom after an intense period of preparation…Such composers know what they are doing when they break a law; they know what to react against, because they have had experience in the classical forms and style. Having mastered the rules, they know which can be violated and which should be obeyed. But, I am sorry to say, I have found too often that young composers plunge into the writing of experimental music with their school lessons only half learned. Too much radical music is sheer sham, for this very reason: its composer sets about revolutionizing the laws of music before he learned them himself.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by David Ewen in The Etude, 1941; cited from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (Boston, MA: Northeastern Universities Press, 1997) pp. 235-6

School, Law, Learning

“I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music. It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail. Here in America we create new opportunities out of adversity, not punitive laws, and we should look to new technologies like Apple's new Music Store for solutions. This way, innovation continues to be the hallmark of America. It is the fans that drive the success of the music business.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Press statement (21 July 2003), quoted in "Jackson attacks music piracy bill" in BBC News (22 July 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3085987.stm

Law, Way, Idea, Business