Music Definition Quotes

Music (Definition; Noun): The artistic organization of sound for the joy and experience of listening. ~ Duane Hewitt

Surely words are just the background music when passion pounces on a soul. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed. ~ Morrissey

The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted…Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature…we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. [Final passage in "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, by Roland Barthes, Trans. Stephen Heath (1977)] ~ Roland Barthes

I didn't try to think what my audience wanted and then make the music accordingly. I made the music and hoped that as many people liked it as possible. ~ David Sanborn

The more people see of me, the more they'll realize that all I'm good for is MAKING MUSIC. ~ Amy Winehouse

So the thing is to put out music for music's sake. ~ Josh Homme

The music that really moves me is music that's written by people where there isn't a lot of money and they're really singing with just their voice and a guitar about their feelings and about their life. Their poetry is relatively simple, in the sense that it's about their soul in jeopardy. ~ Anton Yelchin

You told me men don't do this."
"Do what?"
She walked around the counter, speaking animatedly. "Two years ago. We were at Firelight, having drinks. Cade and I had split up and you said that men don't mope around after a breakup. You said that men avoid issues, get drunk, and pick up a new girl to forget the old one - but that you don't brood."
Ford held out his hands in disbelief. "How do you remember that? And I'm not brooding."
She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him.
"I know you're my friend," he said. "But please, for once, can you just act like you have a penis?
Because I don't want to talk about this."
She shrugged. "Fine. We'll just sit here and listen to music." She reached for his phone again.
"Have you heard Taylor Swift's new song?"
"No."
"Well, you're going to - on endless repeat until you start talking. ~ Julie James

I started making music because I could. ~ Alanis Morissette

The very definition of the innate hollowness of leading a political life when you end up on your nearest and dearest moments or most personal evenings with donors. That should - that should tell you all you need to know about the ramble that is politics. ~ Dennis Miller

I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various kinds of music. ~ Pattiann Rogers

Growing up I was always prone to obsession, partly because of the way I am, but partly because after feeling so lonely for such a long time, when I found someone or something that I liked, I felt helplessly drawn to it. I suppose that accounts for some of the creepiness in my music. ~ Lana Del Rey

But I also think that once you've found stuff that works, stop reading forums, stop reading reviews and just get out there and play. ~ Guthrie Govan

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life. ~ Jaco Pastorius

Put you energy into music. If it fails you, you can become an accountant or a dentist. And then if you become a dentist or an accountant, it's too late to become a musician afterwards. ~ Peter Tork

I think that the best part of music is when it comes from a real place and has an ability to kind of connect on a much larger scale. It no longer is a personal thing, it becomes everyone else's thing as well. ~ Miguel

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don't notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms, and it's exactly those things about oneself and the world that are invisible because they are woven into one's fabric that are the truth. Just like a person can't see his own eyes. You search and search and search, and the truth, by definition, is exactly that which you don't find. You don't see the truth, you are the truth. "Habits of attention are reflexes of the complete character of an individual." And how could you notice your own habits of attention? By writing. Well, at their most profound level? It doesn't make any difference. That is the point. It's like Zen. The truth is not straining for the truth, the truth is in effortlessness. The truth is in being, not trying. Aw hell, that doesn't leave much too chew on. ~ Richard Hell

I was always tinkering around with stuff but nothing serious at the time. I was doing animations and drawing like crazy, but I wasn't imagining that I'd be performing music for people, that's for sure. ~ Chad VanGaalen

They way I walk now
you'd have a hard time recognising me,
on these streets
where I once imagined walking with you.
Hand in hand,
like we always did,
and it never mattered where we were going
because it was all just fine.
I was always fine.
But they rest restlessly in my pockets now,
in a new town,
on these new streets,
and it's heavy to stay standing
for my body is half the size
when you're gone
and these buildings are tall and old and beautiful
and I wonder what secrets they hold.
How to stand so proud after so many years
because I'm still young but I feel worn
and I get through the days on too much caffeine and mood altering chemicals
to stay awake long enough to make the poetry come alive.
I fall asleep on the floor with the music still playing
when my neighbour leaves for the office
and I'm jealous.
I wonder what it's like to go outside and know where to go,
know where you want to end up
and just simply go there.
I've been making lists of things I want to do,
where to go
and who to be,
now that you're gone,
and it's nice and all,
it's just …
I'd rather write it with you,
and go there with you.
Be things
with you.

There were days when I still put on make up
in case you'd come back,
but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rain,
eat when I can and sleep when I can ~ Charlotte Eriksson

I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing ... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change. ~ Tom Petty

What is at the higher levels of meaning consciousness is like a hyperspace in which each point is equidistant from the other and where 'the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere'? The mythologies of the occult seem like baroque music: there is an overall similar quality of sound and movement, but, upon examination, each piece of music is unique; Vivaldi and Scarlatti are similar and different. ~ William Irwin Thompson

When you decide to remove the word "failure" from your dictionary, it is definitely time for you to re-evaluate your definition of the word "success". Those who found success without going through failures never found true success, only delusions. ~ Charbel Tadros

I've got a lot of things that are probably obvious, not much outside the box right now. But, I have been listening to a lot of classical music lately for some reason. I used to do that a lot when I was doing cabinet making in New England. I've sort of returned to that for some reason. That might be surprising to people. ~ Hal Ketchum

When I watched American Idol, I always thought Simon was the most realistic. Simon's like, It was absolutely horrid. That's what they tell in the music industry. ~ Toni Braxton

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition. ~ Chris Hedges

The stories circulating that Kanye West's laptop has been stolen are completely false. His laptop has never been out of his possession. Hence, the laptop has not been hacked, and there has been no leak of personal data such as unreleased music, photographs, designs, videos or any other personal files. The leak today of the unreleased track 'Awesome' was unrelated and completely coincidental. ~ Malik Yusef

I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it. ~ Kim Gordon

I've never been into alternative, hipster rap music. ~ Harmony Korine

When your hero falls from grace, all fairy tales are uncovered
Myth exposed and pain magnified, the grace pays uncovered
He told me to be strong, but I confused to see it so weak
You say never to give up, and it hurts to see what comes to be
When your hero falls soley the stars, and so does the reception of tomorrow
Without my hero, theres only me alone, to deal with my sorrow
Your heart ceases to work, and your soul is not happy at all
What are you expected to do, when your only hero falls ~ Tupac Shakur

I never heard so many kids talk about just doing anything to be famous. I mean, yeah, fame is part of the deal when you're a kid and you think, I wanna go into music, but everybody that I knew was really doing it because of their love for it. I don't see so much of that anymore. ~ David Bowie

I think it's offensive to equate evangelical Christians, Catholics, others that view marriage as between a man and a woman, as being racist. We're not racist. We love our fellow man, we think we're all equal under God's eyes, we don't believe we should change the definition of marriage simply because of opinion polls or because of a court that quite frankly isn't looking at the constitution. ~ Bobby Jindal

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music. ~ Derek Bailey

The people who do the scoring and the music for movies are very talented, really special people. ~ Claudia Christian

I don't believe in having bands for solo records. ~ Mick Jagger

Within the body there is played
Music unending, though without stringed instruments
That music of the Word pervades the entire creation
Who listens to it is freed from all illusion ~ Kabir

The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. One may see this even in the case of idiots, with IQs below 20 and the extremest motor incompetence and bewilderment. Their uncouth movements may disappear in a moment with music and dancing - suddenly, with music, they know how to move. We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music - the sequence of movements they cannot hold as schemes being perfectly holdable as music, i.e. embedded in music. The same may be seen, very dramatically, in patients with severe frontal lobe damage and apraxia - an inability to do things, to retain the simplest motor sequences and programmes, even to walk, despite perfectly preserved intelligence in all other ways. This procedural defect, or motor idiocy, as one might call it, which completely defeats any ordinary system of rehabilitative instruction, vanishes at once if music is the instructor. All this, no doubt, is the rationale, or one of the rationales, of work songs. ~ Oliver Sacks

I believe that feminism has become a political movement that seeks to obtain unlimited rights for woman without corresponding responsibilities via the suppression of feminism.Under my definition, helping oppressed women in other countries falls outside the scope of the movement's interests. ~ Mike Adams