Quotes
"A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence."
"Musicians own music because music owns them."
"Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them."
"If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world."
"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
"There is two kinds of music, the good and bad. I play the good kind."
"Only the pure in heart can make a good soup."
"You don't need any brains to listen to music."
"I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy."
"Talent works, genius creates."
"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war -- for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more."
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another."
"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."
"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
"Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman."
"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body."
"If music be the food of love, play on."
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."
"I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us."
"Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes."
"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions."
"Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs."
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
"Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below."
"A song will outlive all sermons in the memory."
"Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings."
"Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first."
"The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen the joke yet."
"The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes."
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
"There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, 'It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.'"
"All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song."
"Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music."
"I was a veteran before I was a teenager."
"Like a boxer in a title fight, you have to walk in that ring alone."
"Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip."
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not."
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth."
"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides."
"A good composer does not imitate; he steals."
"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
