Quotes about singing
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“She incandesced as she sang. Her singing voice employed more than the process of phonation, more than the scope of the larynx.”

M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004) singer,Carnatic vocalist

Gopal Gandhi in his book of "A Certain Age: Twenty Life Sketches", page=166
About M.S.

“Everything was a bigger struggle for me, everything required a bigger effort, so I understood that the sole basis for my future was discipline, and I maintain that discipline today, at 75...I mean, going out onstage to sing is an act of discipline and of absolute passion. Passion is natural, but discipline is willpower.”

Julio Iglesias (1943) Spanish recording artist; singer-songwriter

On how he credits discipline as the secret of his success in "Julio Iglesias reflects on a life that 'has been a miracle'" https://apnews.com/7ef030336a5b4a1a949723346d64ec51 in AP News (2019 Jun 14)

Nature, Effort, Passion, Future

“I'm glad I can be comfortable as an African and singing my YouTube language when I drop songs, I drop beat songs.”

Niniola (1986) Nigerian singer-songwriter

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/niniola-femi-kuti-958136/amp/ Niniola speaking at an interview about her journey into music

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Dance

“Songs to Herself:
She waved at all the people on the trains & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Variant: She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Life, People, Way, Time

“This wind is mystical yet tame, and it sings to me.”

Marianne Curley book Old Magic

Source: Old Magic

“Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Dreams

“Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing.”

Anne Rice book Memnoch the Devil

Source: Memnoch the Devil

People, Feeling, Thinking, Learning

“Sing Me no songs tell me no tales cry me no tears, but remember me kindly.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Tear, Cry

“My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

A Birthday http://www.poetry-online.org/rossetti_christina_a_birthday.htm, st. 1 (1861).

Bird, Tree, Heart

“Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple (1982)

Love, Flowers, Tree, Dance

“I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Thinking, Tear

“She heard music. Angels singing? she thought, dizzy. It seemed odd for angels to sing after table sex. She managed to swallow on a throat wildly dry. "Music," she murmured.

"My phone. In my pants. Don't care."

"Oh. Not angels."

"No. Def Leppard.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Search

Music, Sex, Angels

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way

“Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Way

“I told you. You don't love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Love, Cars, Understanding, Heart

“Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Feeling, Bird

“Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.”

David Almond book My Name Is Mina

Source: My Name Is Mina

Cats, Dance, Flying

“Shigure Sohma: singing High school girls high school girls all for me High school girls”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

School, Girl

“Once the others were below, Hazel and Leo faced each other awkwardly. They were alone except for Coach Hedge, who was back on the quarterdeck singing thetheme song. The coach had changed the words to:, and Leo really didn’t want to know why.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Change

“I am going to sing lesbian love songs and support gay rights no matter what. The rest is public relations.”

Jasmine Guy (1962) American actor, director and singer

Love, Support

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Way

“When the groundhog casts his shadow
And the small birds sing
And the pussywillows happen
And the sun shines warm
And when the peepers peep
Then it is Spring”

Margaret Wise Brown (1910–1952) American children's writer and editor

Spring, Bird, Sun

“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Secret, Tree

“And it seemed to me that there were fires
Flying till dawn without number
And I never found out things-those
Strange eyes of his-what colour?

Everything trembling and singing and
Were you my enemy or my friend,
Winter was it or summer?”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Winter, Summer, Flying

“Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Time, Dance

“Well, I try my best to be just like I am,
But everybody wants you to be just like them,
They sing while you slave and I just get bored”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Maggie's Farm
Variant: Well I tried my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them

“Really, I'm trying to care, Artemis, really. But I thought it was all supposed to be over when the fat lady sings. Well, she's singing, but it doesn't appear to be over”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Appearance

“I am satisfied… I see, dance, laugh, sing.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Dance

“It’s only the sea,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn’t go inside because it’s a labyrinth and you may never come out again.”

Tove Jansson book Comet in Moominland

Source: Comet in Moominland

Sea

“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Hope

“That's right," said Eeyore. "Sing. Umty-tiddly, umty-too. Here we go gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."
"I am," said Pooh.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“But they're already singing our praises!"
"They are Americans. They toot their horns for anything.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

“Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Thirteen: Frankfurt, Door, Independent Operants

People, Bird, Sleep

“It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world - what pretensions humans have!”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Books, World, Music, Color

“I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Love, Soul

“Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Chant from a children’s game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

Fools, Sun, Night

“Oliver Cromwell can kiss my singing emerald scrotum!”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Kiss

“To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

God, World, Time, Night

“I stand here waiting. To disappear or sing.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories

Waiting

“Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Parent

“Adversity in life does not rob your heart of beauty. It simply teaches it a new song to sing.”

Karen White (1964) American writer

Source: The Time Between

Life, Beauty, Heart

“He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“A bird doesn't sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song”

Joan Walsh Anglund (1926) American poet and children's book author

The quote has been misattributed to Maya Angelou at times, including on U.S. postage.
This quote by Joan Walsh Anglund (1967 in her book, A Cup of Sun) has been widely used by Maya Angelou without attribution to Walsh Walsh Anglund, and wrongly misattributed to Maya Angelou many, many times, including on U.S. postage. However, the quote belongs to Joan Walsh Anglund, and is from her book "A Cup of Sun" published in 1967. However, Maya Angelou changed the pronoun "He" to "It" but quoted everything else of Joan Walsh Anglund. Why Maya Angelou never attributed her most famous quote as being Joan Walsh Anglund's is still a mystery to this day.
Source: A Cup of Sun: A Book of Poems (1967)

Bird

“Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.
With your own voice,' he said.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Source: Sappho's Leap

God

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Cry

“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”

Eric Berne book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Games People Play: the Psychology of Human Relations (1964)

Boy, Bird

“I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life… her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Life, Time, Reading

“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Food, Music, Sense, Heart

“There are any number of magical creatures, mostly female, whose singing can bring about horror and death. Sirens, undines, banshees, Bananarama tribute bands…”

Simon R. Green (1955) British writer

Source: Nightingale's Lament

Death

“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Truth, World, Painting

“Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Night

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“And unless I'm remembering it wrong, mermaids don't sing and sirens don't swim."
"Ariel sang in 'The Little Mermaid'," Corey said.
Sam came over to join us. "Do I even want to know why you remember her name?”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Calling

“See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner," "A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could've had you?" "Because when he sings… even the birds stop to listen.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Girl, Bird

“The Smiths are singing and someone says "Turn that gay angst music off.”

Bret Easton Ellis The Rules of Attraction

Source: The Rules of Attraction

Music

“Oh, Tongue, give sound to joy and sing
Of hope and promise on dragonwing”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragonsong

Source: Dragonsong

Hope, Joy

“The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“If I had to sum up what he did to me, I’d say it was this: he made me sing along to all the bad songs on the radio. Both when he loved me and when he didn't.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Love

“Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Women, Children, Family

“A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

Cats, Dance

“Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Winter

“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Tear, Heart

“Love, I find, is like singing.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Love

“But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“We will now sing forth, hymn 405, 'Oh God, what on earth is my hairdo all about?”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

God

“In this universe there might grow roses which sing.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

Universe

“I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers…”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Help

“Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no applause.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Source: Charlie Chaplin: Interviews

Life, Dance, Cry

“Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.”

Charles Frazier book Cold Mountain

Source: Cold Mountain

Beauty, Bird, Sense

“At this point, a spaceship could land on Main Street and Elvis could saunter out singing "Love Me Tender," and I wouldn't be surprised”

Michele Bardsley (1970) American writer

Source: Come Hell or High Water

Love

“Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/Sing heavenly muse”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Death, World, Tree, Loss

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Women, World, Understanding, Bird

“There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

VH1.com, 11/23/03
Context: "The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" [from Puccini's Turandot] or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva."

Star

“Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?'
Jem: 'Yang guizi… foreign devils.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 1: Puget Sound and British Columbia <br class="br">1910s

Beauty, Star, Universe, Appearance

“She sings a dark destructive song.”

Euripidés Medea

Source: Medea

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

Love, Dance

“Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

World, Kiss, Tree, Bee

“Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Source: Trainspotting

Change

“It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 3

Food, Personality

“How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Bird, Joy

“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Guy

“We need music," Nico said. "How's your singing?"
"Um, no. Can't you just, like, tell it to open? You're the son of Hades and all."
"It's not so easy. We need music."
I was pretty sure if I tried to sing, all I would cause was an avalanche.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Music

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

In den finsteren Zeiten
Wird da auch gesungen werden?
Da wird auch gesungen werden.
Von den finsteren Zeiten.
"Motto to the 'Svendborg Poems' " [Motto der 'Svendborger Gedichte] (1939), trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 320
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Time

“You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Life, Painting

“Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables