Musical Genius Quotes

John Lennon was a musical genius. All I have to do is think of some of his songs and even the titles make me feel good ... and I'm not the only one. His music has crossed cultures and even generations. ~ Ray Comfort

As to Mr Plornish, he had married these articles of belief in marrying Mr Nandy's daughter, and only wondered how it was that so gifted an old gentleman had not made a fortune. This he attributed, after much reflection, to his musical genius not having been scientifically developed in his youth. 'For why,' argued Mr Plornish, 'why go a-binding music when you've got it in yourself? That's where it is, I consider.' Old Nandy had a patron: one patron. He had a patron who in a certain sumptuous way - an apologetic way, as if he constantly took an admiring audience to witness that he really could ~ Charles Dickens

He would never be a musical genius, but he could be a person a musical genius loved. Such were the spoils of love, he realized, that her success was also, by some odd refraction, his. ~ Nathan Hill

The technical brilliance of Lang Lang and the musical genius to create a masterpiece on the spot. ~ Ian Brown

Education is one of the Grand Christianson Obsessions. They've been whole years my mother's kept us home for intensive private study. As a result of that, Paul will perform the first brain transplant, James will someday build a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean, Charlie – who is an actual musical genius – will probably end up writing the Great American Symphony, and I – I know a little bit about a lot of things.
I can tell you the chemical composition of the stuff your stick in your hair; how long it would take you, at just under the speed of light, to get to Alpha Centauri – and how old your body would be when you finally got there; the middle name of the third president of the United States; the amount of the present budget deficit; the author of the Brothers Karamazov, and how many feet there are in a line of trochaic heptameter. The Little Girl Who Had to Know Why, Paul used to call me. But even my mother couldn't reconcile me and math. ~ Kristen D. Randle

And do you know the story about Haydn's head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He'd carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master's gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That's why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It's the only absolute death. And I don't want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death. ~ Milan Kundera

Here's Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can't even deal with him because he's always saying something that people go, 'Oh, I can't believe Kanye said that. I can't believe he did that.' ~ Ben Horowitz

Collaborating with the musical genius of our time in some ways with Prince himself - late, great Gerald Levert,all these are forms of singing education, what the Greeks call paideia,that deep education to get us to shift from superficial things to serious things, to shift from bling-bling to life and death to justice and pain and joy, those fundamental, elemental things that we must come to terms with as we make our moves from our mother's womb to the tomb. ~ Cornel West

I think I'm a vocal genius, not a musical genius. I like background vocals. I consider myself a voice, not a singer. A voice is a sound, and singing is what you do with that sound. ~ Brian Wilson

My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note! ~ May Sarton

Ronald Isley is a musical genius. ~ R. Kelly

Stevie Wonder is a musical genius ! ~ Eddie Murphy

It is somewhat remarkable that Cornwall has produced no musical genius of any note, and yet the Cornishman is akin to the Welshman and the Irishman. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

I'm a musical genius. ~ Timbaland

I'm supposed to be a musical genius, but I can't work the car seat that well. ~ Kanye West

Years ago at music camp Harry once said to me, "He's not just a musical prodigy, you know. He's a musical genius." It comes back to me now. And I laugh when I kiss my 'musical genius' because really he's just Flynn. ~ Tabitha Suzuma

Every minute i spend talking to you is a mnute i could spend practicing the violin, and when you're a musical genius like me, every minute counts. ~ Lemony Snicket

The last verse [In My Secret Life] completely got to me, about how we all have great ideals but in reality we end up conforming, following everyone else. We want to be stronger so we lead that life inside, thinking of ourselves as these great brave souls. I literally thought when I was 15 that I was a musical genius and I could change the world, but in fact you're not and you can't and you don't, and that realisation is almost heartbreaking. ~ Katie Melua

People's musical tastes are fickle, and music can be a fashion. ~ Alex Kapranos

Talent produces good work;
genius produces great work. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

One of the best essays I've seen in recent years was by a young woman who wrote about how being chosen to choreograph a high school musical forced her to assume a leadership role she wasn't sure she was ready for - but of course she was. ~ Kate Klise

Get real. They'll try to kill us no matter what. I can find out how to open the files from Mickey. You may be impressed with this genius shit but you should really find out what a mess his head is. The right drugs, he'll cut his own throat and forget why he's bleeding. That was an interesting choice of metaphor. ~ Dan Ahearn

But unlike the person with exquisite taste in painting or perfume, the movie nerd is classless as well. Grasping the genius of Russ Meyer or George Romero or Herschell Gordon Lewis carries no cultural cachet and gets no one laid, believe me. ~ David Gordon

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Mrs. Heath wanted to sprinkle their minds with grass seed and watch the blades spike up through the earth, flat and predictable as a golf course. She wanted dependable students, well fed but not necessarily nourished. But he was not in that category. Admittedly, he could not count on his perceptions of letters and words, and he was not always accurate. He misused words most when he liked their sound. A sentence had a kind of music, and the word sounded right. The definitions were never as interesting as the sound they made coming out of your mouth. He rolled their flavors around on his tongue, tasting every nook and cranny, but he could not be trusted to deliver the right answer and she would never give him better than a C, no matter what genius work he produced. The way he saw it, his mind was a big unruly field of wildflowers. One day he would shower the world with blossoms. ~ Elizabeth Brundage

I've been an advocate against the view of the writer as a partitioned genius hanging in conceptual space, or up on a mountain, a bringer of Promethean fire, some unique transmission that comes out of nowhere. I prefer the opposite view - that writers come from somewhere. They read things, and they think about them, and they incorporate other people's thoughts. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Change is growth. For me it has been a very spiritual and musical rebirth. ~ Lenny Kravitz

The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category. ~ Adolf Hitler

In a way, that's always been Yes' history to a large extent! Quite a few occasions when we've had a new band member or change in members, then we've done a new album with new chops and refreshed the musical approach. ~ Chris Squire

Thomas Ligotti is an absolute master of supernatural horror and weird fiction, and a true original. He pursues his unique vision with admirable honesty and rigorousness and conveys it in prose as powerfully evocative as any writer in the field. I'd say he might just be a genius. ~ Ramsey Campbell

I love 'Guitar Hero' because I love music, but I have no musical ability whatsoever. So I love a game that makes you feel like you're a rock star. ~ Marisa Miller

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. ( ... )Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed. ~ John Taylor Gatto

Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now. ~ Lord Chesterfield

Genius is often mistaken for idiocy, when perception is blurred by conformity ~ Jerry Guthrie

Being ahead of your time means leaving people behind. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Genius was being born in her, filling the empty spaces in her bed, her heart, her womb. She needed no-one but herself. ~ Salman Rushdie

Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Hands down, Rick Ross is a genius. Hands down, Diddy is a genius. Hands down, Kanye is a genius. All of them. ~ Betty Wright

Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature. ~ Robert Blair

I didn't know how you'd get us out of that last one. But you did. You were good. ~ Orson Scott Card

From insipid sweet wine; from men who wear moustaches; from the sort of people that call legs 'limbs'; from bedraggled white petticoats: Kind Devil, deliver me. ~ Mary MacLane

I'd like to make a film musical. That's really my dream. ~ Luke Evans

What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough. ~ Eugene Delacroix

Everyone said, 'Emil, you are a fool!'
But when I first won the European Championship, they said: 'Emil, you are a genius!' ~ Emil Zatopek

Genius and sunshine have this in common that they are the two most precious gifts of heaven to earth, and are dispensed equally to the just and the unjust. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

Nova Scotia is a box bass and a fiddle and German sourdough and scotch eggs. And the air, all heavy and bracing and wet. When you're driving, you wave to the old guy walking along the side of the road in the plaid flannel shirt and he waves back, because it's just what you do. This is an extraordinarily hospitable and musical place. You've got to haul wood in the winter and batten down hatches during hurricanes, and there are bagpipes and banjos and weathered old barns and whales offshore and abandoned fishing boats sleeping on the beach. ~ Kate Inglis

Logical reasoning may be a most convenient means of mental communication for covering short distances, but the curvature of the earth, alas, is reflected even in logic: an ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring you back to the point of departure where you return aware of the simplicity of genius, with a delightful sensation that you have embraced truth, while actually you have merely embraced your own self ... anything you might term a deduction already exposes the flaw: logical development inexorably becomes an envelopment. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I started playing bass in my friend's band for some reason. It was just something I did because, well, he asked me if I wanted to play bass and he played me this song - Nirvana's version of "Molly's Lips", the Vaselines song - and he said, "You can do this! This is not hard!" and it's like a two-note song. I learned that and then I thought I was a genius. ~ Jens Lekman

One element of Madonna's career that really takes center stage is how many times she's reinvented herself. It's easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It's inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable. ~ Taylor Swift

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts. ~ Italo Calvino

Death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes, and we keep living anyway.... ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, take, is the natural genius of the British mind. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character. ~ Peter Drucker