Music Writing Quotes

Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people's heads. That's the only way to make those fuckers listen. ~ Don DeLillo

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music. ~ Melanie Martinez

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music. ~ W. H. Auden

I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment. ~ Edgard Varese

I write music because I love it. Sometimes more than anything in the world. ~ Ansel Elgort

For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music. ~ Jay-Z

People showed me this way of dealing with music, writing songs, thinking about music and shows and our community and the fact that it doesn't have to be about being popular or fashion or making money. ~ Chuck Ragan

Time to write and sing, to laugh, to listen, to discover, to cry,
to love music. ~ Jeff Buckley

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out. ~ Beck

Hip-hop definitely saved my life. Being able to write about the things I was doing, the things I was seein' and all that stuff, putting that on paper and coming into my own as Joell Ortiz. That's why I don't have a stage name, because I chose to talk about everything under the sun that happened to me or next to me in my music. ~ Joell Ortiz

I don't just strictly sample. I build. I'm a musician: I play piano and drums, I read notes, I write music. ~ AraabMuzik

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music ... ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. ~ Truman Capote

We never write anything with themes. We just write the same rubbish all the time. ~ John Lennon

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music. ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams

I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun. ~ Eric Idle

Bon Jovi is most definitely the key to how I am able to write so much in a day ~ C.S. Woolley

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

I write a lot of stuff, and some of it I don't even present to Judas Priest. But having said that, my first love is to play Judas Priest music. ~ Glenn Tipton

If we compel the composer to write in terms of what the listener is able to hear, we flirt with the danger of freezing the evolution of musical language, whose progressive development comes about through transgressions of a given era's perceptual habits. ~ Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Writing more and more to the sound of music, writing more and more like music. Sitting in my studio tonight, playing record after record, writing, music a stimulant of the highest order, far more potent than wine. ~ Anais Nin

Art is a kind of magic. Creativity is mysterious, even to artists, who might be able to name their inspiration but can't always explain how their influences and experiences came together to create this new thing- this painting, this story, this song. If you break art down to its base elements, there's nothing miraculous about the letters of the alphabet or a drop of paint. But an artist can put those elements together to create something powerful, something that moves us and withstands the test of time. A work that no one but that artist could have imagined, let alone created. ~ Sarah Cross

I think, if I had my choice, I would spend all my time in the studio writing, and creating music. ~ Zach Condon

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence. ~ Louis Sachar

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz. ~ Charles Mingus

Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing - the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music - if it's a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it. ~ Alex Kapranos

I've been very lucky, man. Like you say, though, the writing is what kicked all that in and made it possible. It's something that I have always been very thankful of, that that kicked in, and that I could be free with the music. ~ Tony Joe White

I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness ... Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman. ~ Alan Moore

Everybody expresses themselves in different ways. Some people write it down, some people paint it. Some people express it in the way they speak. We just express our feelings through music. ~ Isaac Hanson

Writing music is my one and only passion and joy. ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I don't just write music to esthetically satisfy somebody. The reason I write music is that I feel it's a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence. ~ George Russell

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away. ~ Artie Shaw

Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it. ~ Leonard Bernstein

After reading someone you love, wait at least an hour before starting to write ~ Matty Healy

Artists strive for perfection. But what they often fail to see is that the beauty, the humanity, lies within the flaws. ~ Elizabeth Isaacs

I didn't think anything we did was spectacular. I remember we thought, Let's just write some scary music. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I am an improviser, ... I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all, it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised. ~ Joe Zawinul

The best user experiences are enchanting. They help the user enter an alternate reality, whether it's the world of making music, writing, sharing photos, coding, or managing a project. ~ Kathy Sierra

If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music. ~ Jean Sibelius

Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music. ~ Skitch Henderson

My playing music is strictly for fun. When I was in a band, I was really excited to talk about it since I had never really played music to that extent. It was never meant as something I would consider as anything more than having fun with my friends. But I think I would enjoy writing music for the movies that I'm working on. ~ Anton Yelchin

My advice is: if you've got to be miserable to write great music, then drive a truck. ~ Chris Isaak

I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting ... around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent. ~ Charlie Daniels

When I write I like to just say everything that people think about but never express vocally. I just get deep into it; I'm a bit obsessive about music. ~ Drake

I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing. ~ Andrew Hill

If the boy who draws
lets you look over his shoulder.
If the poet
smiles
and shows you her words.
If the girl who sings for the shower only,
hums a song
in front of you.
Know that you're no longer a person
but the air
and dust
that fills their lungs.
When the world perishes,
and all things cease to exist,
you'll remain inside an ink stain,
a paint brush,
a song.

Poem N. 8 ~ Alaska Gold

I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music. ~ Nick Lowe

Writing is my oxygen. Music is my carbon dioxide. ~ Jessica Bell

Largely I write from life ... I write from what happens to me. Mostly about love. People notice the other stuff more but I write mostly about love. ~ David Crosby

I write music, really, to make myself feel better. ~ Jenny Lewis

I'm composing and writing music. ~ Anthony Hopkins

My thesis statement would be - Bach didn't write Baroque music. He wrote great music. ~ Chris Thile

It was a natural thing for me to go become a musician, and then to start writing music. I don't even really remember making a decision to go into music, it was just there for me, always. If I weren't making a living at it, I'd still be writing music. ~ Geoff Zanelli

Being on 'Nashville' and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller - so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I've been blessed to play with and observe - that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music. ~ Jonathan Jackson

The best thing about Art is that the people who create it live forever. ~ Jonathan Heatt

I just want to keep writing music. ~ Lady Gaga

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do. ~ Elvis Costello

I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it's hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don't get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I'm sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one. ~ Nick Hornby

Although they only give gold medals in the field of athletics, I encourage everyone to look into themselves and find their own personal dream, whatever that may be - sports, medicine, law, business, music, writing, whatever. The same principles apply. Turn your dream into a goal and learn how to attack that goal systematically. Break it into bite-size chunks that seem possible, and then don't give up. Just keep plugging away. ~ John Naber

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I went to school in Gainesville because it was a huge punk and folk town. So I went to class twice a week, and then I went to shows and wrote. I did a lot of music writing before I actually started playing music. ~ Benjamin Booker

I write very sporadically. I write sometimes three things in a week and then nothing for a year. I make a space for it but I don't push it. They just come and they come. ~ David Crosby

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music. ~ John Steinbeck

There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing. ~ Fran Lebowitz

I like any and all of my associations with music -writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky. ~ Duke Ellington

When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time. ~ Lady Gaga

I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women. ~ Billy Joel

I've always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel - or at least the kind of novel I'm attempting to write. You know,' he continued, extemporizing as he went along, 'first you take one note and explore it for a while, then another to discover its possibilities, then perhaps you get to the dominant, and pause for a bit, and it's only gradually that the phrases begin to form and the tabla joins in with the beat ... and then the more brilliant improvisations and diversions begin, with the main theme returning from time to time, and finally it all speeds up, and the excitement increases to a climax. ~ Vikram Seth

A good poem contains both meaning and music ~ Eve Merriam

Nothing could be more natural to me than writing music. ~ Lisa Lopes

I had a great conversation with Trent Reznor. Trent said, "I'd have a sixpack, too, if I didn't write my own music!" ~ Ian Astbury

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces. ~ Alan Moore

Film is such an extraordinary rich medium which can handle so many different modes of operation, combining together in the same place all these extraordinary disciplines which may be executed in their own right - music, writing, picture making of all kinds, and I often feel that some filmmakers make films with one eye closed and two hands tied behind their backs. ~ Peter Greenaway

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better. ~ William Faulkner

I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music. ~ Elie Wiesel

I think US/UK genre has become more open to "diverse" writers and writing; there's a genuine interest in reading work from countries outside the US/UK and hearing voices that have been historically shut out, but at the same time, people are quite lazy. That sounds harsh, but I include myself in it - your tastes are shaped by what you've read and watched before, and it takes a little effort to understand stories that use a different voice, that follow different storytelling conventions, that are trying to subvert the dominant paradigm. There's a quite large group of people who are "yay diversity" in theory, but I think the number of people who have then said to themselves, "OK, if I'm committed to this, I need to start reading outside my comfort zone and making an effort" is maybe a little smaller. ~ Zen Cho

The other attack going viral on tumblr at the moment is that I write novels about broken people who need saving, and that this encourages the romanticization of brokenness. Well, maybe there are wholly self-sufficient unbroken people who are able to thrive in complete isolation, succeeding solely by the sweat of their own Randian brows, but those are not the people I know or am interested in writing about. So yeah. I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken. We all depend upon each other for support and compassion. That web of interconnected yearning and need is essential to my understanding of human experience, and I don't find celebrating it problematic. ~ John Green

The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces. ~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Whether it's acting, directing or writing, I want to be involved in the film industry for the rest of my life. ~ Tom Felton

… not my own opinion, but my wife's: Yesterday, when weary with writing, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. 'It seems then,' I said, 'if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, oil and slices of eggs had been flying about in the air for all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad.' 'Yes,' responded my lovely, 'but not so nice as this one of mine. ~ Johannes Kepler

Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool. ~ Maynard James Keenan

Closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I'd heard all my life, even more than "This Lullaby." All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again. ~ Sarah Dessen

Music is reflection of self
We just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail
It's fucked up, ain't it?
How we can come from practically nothin
To bein able to have any f*ckin thing that we wanted
That's why we sing for these kids who don't have a thing
Except for a dream and a f*ckin rap magazine
Who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long
Idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs
Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in they lives
So they sit and they cry, at night, wishin they'd die
Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We're nothin to you, but we're the f*ckin sh*t in they eyes
That's why we seize the moment
Try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it
Cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone
Just let our spirits live on
Through our lyrics that you hear in our songs, and we can… ~ Eminem

What you don't write is often more important than what you do ~ Ernest Hemingway,

He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

There's a hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music ... When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should ... ~ Rumi

The mainstream of literary culture in the U.K. is very averse to writing about technology. ~ Nick Harkaway

I don't fear the silence. I take it into me like air. I hear the music within it. But ~ Kelly Gardiner

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. ~ Leonard Bernstein

If the pressure is getting to you, whistle. In a barely audible way. It's the best way I know of to let go of tension. Music gets your mind off the situation, and the act of whistling melts the tension out of your body. ~ Fuzzy Zoeller

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under contro ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As in art, poetry, music, etc., the best theology is worked out in pain ~ Steve Chalke

Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing. ~ Martin Amis

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes. ~ Thomas Beecham

What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts ... ~ Anton Webern

The imagination gland doesn't die. It just becomes reliant on manufactured spirit. ~ S.A. Tawks

When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl
not Frances, not anyone I've ever known
and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me
that one about being chartless
and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me
that one about the little lamb that made thee
and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door. ~ J.D. Salinger