Quotes about song
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“They write songs about California girls for a reason.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

“The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Way, Feeling

“Oh, Daisy, it's revolting the way I want to fawn all over him. I'm afraid I'm going to do something dreadfully silly today. Burst into song or something. For God's sake, don't let me.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

God, Way

“They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Source: Cash

Dogs, Way, Home, Time

“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

Singing

“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, Singing

“But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“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, Singing

“… I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Love, Past, Future

“The song is over. But the melody lingers on.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

“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, Singing, Heart

“I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Love, People

“We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Sadness, Cars, Home

“He snorted. “He thinks killing a day-old hydra has made him a hero.” None of the songs had ever mentioned the Vandalus Hydra being one day old: it diminished the story more than a little.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Thinking

“It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Life, Time

“Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I have walked a stair of swords,
I have worn a coat of scars.
I have vowed with hollow words,
I have lied my way to the stars
-Songs of Sapphique”

Catherine Fisher book Incarceron

Source: Incarceron

Way, Star

“This is the biggest damn iPod I've ever seen,' Claire said, which made him choke on his beer.
'Kidding. I have seen a jukebox before.'
'The way you're feeding it, I'm not so sure. You think you picked enough songs?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Feast of Fools

Way, Beer, Thinking

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

16 August 1925
Source: Enough Rope (1926)

Love, Life

“She sings a dark destructive song.”

Euripidés Medea

Source: Medea

Singing

“Look. Listen. Use ears I'd be proud to call our own. Listen to the silence behind the engines' noise. Jesus, Sweets,. Hear it? It's a love song.

For whom?

You are loved.”

David Foster Wallace book Girl with Curious Hair

Source: Girl with Curious Hair

Love, Silence

“And then like a song we'd forgotten was even on the mix, you stepped into the house and my whole life.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Life, Housing

“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Thinking, Time

“Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?”

James Frey (1969) American screenwriter and media presenter

God, Heart

“His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace (1999), p. 3-4
Context: Although he devoted hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Lie, Soul