Musician Quotes

I'm meeting a lot of musicians and people in the music business, and am constantly trying to figure out what I want to do with music. We'll see. I want to do everything. ~ Tyler Posey

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes. ~ Dodie Smith

I am not immune to the lure of a signed record, flier or set list. The fact that your music heroes potentially had, in their own hands, the record you now have in yours is kind of cool. When the musician has departed, it can give the thing a unique power. ~ Henry Rollins

If you were to ask me, 'What the hell does a musician have in common with a restaurant?' I would say a huge amount. It's show time every day, it's a team of people, like, running a circus, which is running a rock-and-roll band. ~ Mick Fleetwood

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body's breath, and the strings' wails and moans are echoes of the body's music. It is the body's vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations. ~ Anais Nin

Maybe the idea of being a rockstar or being the one who's recording or playing, sort of doesn't really matter as much anymore, when you're surrounded by great musicians who bring their spirit, their own talent. ~ Adrian Grenier

I've always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me. ~ Kaskade

Amazon has included me in an opportunity to provide top-shelf television-style programming live on the world's computer screens. To hold forth with the industry's very best actors, directors, musicians, authors - I'm thrilled to be on the cutting edge of this. ~ Bill Maher

How many things by season season'd are, To their right praise and true perfection! ~ William Shakespeare

Being a musician is a job - it is just a really fun one! ~ Colbie Caillat

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music. ~ Toots Thielemans

If you deny yourself access to the child within because you're too serious, you also block your connection to the divine Light and your feminine self. Every creator who's any good uses their feminine side to create with.. Whether a scientist working on a hunch, a painter working on the interplay of colors, or a musician dealing with the juxtaposition of notes and chords. ~ Stuart Wilde

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other. ~ Thomas Berger

Soon enough my mind hooked onto the missing guitars and the locked door and the hole filled up with clues and suspects and all the detective stuff and I could pretend it was just another case.
The guitars. The lock. The keys. The gun. The musician in the drawing room with the gun. The duchess in the kitchen with the guitar. I let my mind fill with the case. It was only a case. Only another case. Another sentence of words to arrange.
Maybe that was all there was to life. One long case, only you kept switching roles. Detective, witness, client, suspect. Then one day I'd be the victim instead of the detective or the client and it would all be over. Then I'd finally have a fucking day off. ~ Sara Gran

I didn't decide to become a musician until the age of 15, which is quite late. ~ Evelyn Glennie

I had to deal with being somewhat of an outcast because it's not socially acceptable to be a struggling musician. There have been times where I've felt sorry for the person I was dating. I felt she deserved better. ~ Taylor Hicks

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. ~ Jose Saramago

I started to study the flute in 1951. The flute has been utilized by African-American musicians as far back as the early Twenties. If you take a look at some of the old pictures of Chick Webb, then you will see the flute right there on the bandstand among the woodwinds. ~ Yusef Lateef

Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music. ~ Dave Barry

My father's nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that's how I decided I wanted to get into music. ~ Charlie Wilson

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him ~ C.S. Lewis

We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. ~ Steven Pressfield

Most musicians I know don't just play music on Saturday night. They play music every day. They are always fiddling around, letting the notes lead them from one place to another. Taking still photographs is like that. It is a generative process. It pulls you along. ~ Henry Wessel, Jr.

The life of any musician really doesn't fall into a normal schedule at all. Every week there are different rehearsals, different days and nights of performances, so we don't have a particular pattern that we can follow. For a conductor, it is a little bit worse because we have to allow for traveling. ~ Leonard Slatkin

I rented a summer home in the winter on Long Island, I took long walks, and then I ended up moving to Woodstock. It was a fertile musical area and time, and I played with a lot of different musicians there, including getting into women's music, and I ended up playing with Cris Williamson. ~ June Millington

It all boils down to what I would most like to do as a musician. Put songs on people's lips instead of just in their ears. ~ Pete Seeger

My dad wasn't the biggest role model, but he was a great musician and I loved him very much. He was a character. ~ Randy Houser

When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog. ~ George Shearing

My parents told me that if I became a musician, perhaps I'll lose the ability to make a livelihood. But, I became a musician anyway. Among other things, there are differences and similarities in people which I believe one has to consider in order to even come up with a rough judgment of that person. I could say some people are born to be attracted to certain things. Therefore, I don't really have a reason (as to why I am so attracted to a music career)."
- Leda (DELUHI) ~ Leda Deluhi

It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention. ~ Steve Vai

I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid. ~ Greg Behrendt

In Hamburg the waiters always had Preludin - and various other pills, but I remember Preludin because it was such a big trip - and they were all taking these pills to keep themselves awake, to work these incredible hours in this all-night place. And so the waiters, when they'd see the musicians falling over with tiredness or with drink, they'd give you the pill. You'd take the pill, you'd be talking, you'd sober up, you could work almost endlessly - until the pill wore off, then you'd have to have another. ~ John Lennon

The goths are beautiful, a vast depth of subcultural, aesthetic and poetic ideas, and we would identify with that as we did back in 1979. But not the post modern distortion ... the costume without the brain. ~ Peter Murphy

No disrespect to any other god, but Shiva's an outsider god. He breaks the rules. He's a brilliant musician, a brilliant dancer; he treats his wife as an equal, and she opposes him many times, but he obsessively loves her. ~ Amish Tripathi

In a certain sense, these were lessons I learned by playing with Indian musicians. The rhythmic forms that they use are very complex, and very challenging. In order to play in fifteen, or eleven, or seven or even five, you have to have mastered that time in order to be able to be free with the music. ~ John McLaughlin

And that is the essence of wisdom - to be in harmony with nature, with the natural rhythm of the universe. And whenever you are in harmony with the natural rhythm of the universe, you are a poet, you are a painter, you are a musician, you are a dancer. ~ Osho

I used to have a lot of envy for those musicians who have been universally loved. ~ Moby

When you say what is the difference between me and my stage name the idea is that as a musician you always think of yourself as inhabiting a certain cultural space in the kind of a cultural landscape, so when I say cultural space what I mean to imply there is that you exist within certain parameters of how people think of culture. ~ DJ Spooky

I wanted to be a musician, either a guitarist or a drummer. I guess my dreams were in the entertainment industry, and I landed somewhere along there. ~ Israel Broussard

Also, I'd like to play an athlete again, while I'm still physically fit, or a musician, like Nat King Cole, because I play the trumpet and sing. I'd like to incorporate that into a character. ~ Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. So is the case with everybody. ~ Rajneesh

Well, I started out as a musician, so when I was about 10 years old, I was already in a band. ~ Tommy Chong

Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets? ~ Kate Chopin

Everyone wanted me to be the bad boy, the label wanted it, the publicists wanted it, but I was just trying to be myself. ~ Cassandra Giovanni

I'm in a position I never imagined I'd be in as a musician. Bob Dylan built an audience through recording and live shows. The opportunities for an artist today are totally different. ~ Ben Sollee

I always was a rebel ... but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted ... and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not. ~ John Lennon

I haven't had that many people onstage for a while, and I'm looking forward to that. They're all such creative musicians in their own right. They're all complete individuals. They're not just a pick-up band. They all have their own thing going on. ~ Andrew Bird

YouTube is an amazing platform for young musicians - although it's harder to get noticed now that everyone is on it. ~ Conor Maynard

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself. ~ Lisa Loeb

My father was indeed a musician, but he was a weekend warrior. He was a welder, actually, and worked all his life at the Ironworks in Beloit Wisconsin, and he played in a swing band on weekends. ~ Robin Zander

When you're younger - duh - you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life. ~ Scott Ian

What a good session musician does is listen to the song, to the artist, and to the other players. That way you can help bring out the song and help the artist express what they want to express. It's never about you stepping out and showing you can play something fancy. ~ Benmont Tench

My only concern about art collaborations is that I never thought of myself as an Artist. My tax forms say Musician/Songwriter. ~ Sufjan Stevens

I'm more of an actor than a musician. I've made a little name for myself as an actor, but I also front this band. We have some great players out here, and we've found a little niche with L.A. Hootenanny. ~ Todd Lowe

Every pioneer and musician who could carry a musket went into the ranks. Even the sick and foot-sore, who could not keep up in the march, came up as soon as they could find their regiments, and took their places in line of battle, while it was battle, indeed. ~ Joshua Chamberlain

I am, of course, a rogue. A rapscallion. A musician. I would bring her nothing but poverty, shame, and bruised shins from my flailing limbs. She is the better for our parting. ~ Sarah Dessen

I would advise all young musicians to not only experience and play chamber music, but to go to operas, speak to the singers, to explore and expand your horizons. ~ Wu Han

I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song. ~ Lita Ford

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading. ~ Alan Greenspan

Well, it'll always be disco/electro-pop. That's what I first wanted to do when I started out as a musician in 1977. It's only ever been dance-pop that I've wanted to do. ~ Pete Burns

I sat in at every club in New York City, jamming with musicians, because it felt right - and because it felt right and we were having fun - the people dancing and sipping their drinks in the clubs felt it too and it made them smile. ~ Ray Conniff

As I've learned in the past few years, Mali is home to some of the most incredible musicians in the world. ~ Nick Zinner

Benny [Carter] opened the eyes of a lot of producers and studios, so that they could understand that you could go to blacks for other things outside of blues and barbecue. He's a total musician. He was the pioneer, he was the foundation. He made it possible for that doubt to be taken away. ~ Quincy Jones

Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician's musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that's what knocks people out about him. But he's such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau. ~ Chet Atkins

I'm just opening the doors. And a lot of this is new to me - thinking about it, and letting go again and again and again, trusting that if I'm meant to continue working as a musician, it'll happen. If I'm not, then pull out the life support. ~ Jane Siberry

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme ~ Jacqueline Carey

A devastating culmination of the elegant and the funky, a really sensational musician with enormous depth. ~ Nick Lowe

We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human
being. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard. ~ John Cage

I don't come from a musical family at all, but I realized early on I was a musician. I started begging for a piano when I was 6 years old. ~ Jason Robert Brown

I know what that tastes like, to be a rock-and-roll star - to have a limousine, to have girls screaming when they see you, girls trying to cut my hair, get a piece of me. But I don't walk around with a concept of myself as a rock-and-roll star, and certainly not as a musician, because I really can't play anything, except primitively. ~ Patti Smith

What are we singers but the silver-voiced messengers of the poet and the musician? ~ Nellie Melba

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers. ~ Win Butler

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too. ~ Richie Sambora

I want to make a picture that could stand on its own, regardless of what it was a picture of. I've never been a bit interested in the fact that this was a picture of a blues musician or a street corner or something. ~ William Eggleston

This is Graceland. Home of the most famous musician in the world."
"Michael Jackson lived here?"
"No, dummy," Carter said. "Elvis Presley. ~ Rick Riordan

It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines] ~ Fergie

Mary was proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor; but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality, than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do. ~ George MacDonald

Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability. ~ Rudolf Carnap

We are musicians, entertainers. We can do it. We have the right tools. No worries. ~ Pete Townshend

I fell in love with a man, then a musician, then an artist, then so much more. But today? Today I fell in love with a man who would do anything to take care of his family. ~ Sarah Robinson

Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together ... It's been a really cool experience. ~ Sasha Pieterse

I really didn't intend to be a musician when I left Japan. ~ Ikue Mori

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. ~ Bradford Cox

I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life. ~ Kim Edwards

After the merch booth has closed, I join the melee, but am nudged to the middle of the mob, and then the back, where I stand on my toes to watch person after person embrace my husband. Jeff's words from our pseudo-poker game rise to the surface of my consciousness and bob there, refusing to be silenced. This is the very definition of being a supporting character. But I don't really mind that I'm this far away - I can still see the smile on his face as bright as a spotlight, and his joy seems to vibrate across the distance. Surely everyone knows what a big deal this must be to him, but I still look at him and remember the subway musician hunched over his guitar, sitting on a narrow stool, guitar case open at his feet. And now here he is, wearing a suit, standing beside Ramón Martín, and getting the praise and adoration of an entire cast and crew. I'm still on the sidelines, but I helped make that happen. ~ Christina Lauren

I just wanted to say that it's okay if you dislike me. If you make Clary happy, I'm fine with you." He stuck his hand out, and Jace took his own hand out of Clary's and shook Simon's, a bemused look on his face.
"I don't dislike you," he said. "In fact, because I actually do like you, I'm going to offer you some advice."
"Advice?" Simon looked wary.
"I see that you are working this vampire angle with some success," Jace said, indicating Isabelle and Maia with a nod of his head. "And kudos. Lots of girls love that sensitive-undead thing. But I'd drop the whole musician angle if I were you. Vampire rock stars are played out, and besides, you can't possibly be very good."
Simon sighed. "I don't suppose there's any change you could reconsider the part where you didn't like me?"
"Enough, both of you," Clary said. "You can't be complete jerks to each other forever, you know."
"Technically," said Simon, "I can."
Jace made an inelegant noise; after a moment Clary realized that he was trying not to laugh, and only semi-succeeding.
Simon grinned. "Got you."
"Well," Clary said. "This is a beautiful moment. ~ Cassandra Clare

All people are musicians" Wit countered. "The question is whether or not they share their songs. ~ Brandon Sanderson

My father was a psychiatrist and a social worker but he was a very talented painter and musician and writer on the side. ~ Tunde Adebimpe

As both a musician and a former teacher, I feel that music is as important to kids as reading and writing. ~ Sheryl Crow

My dad was a musician. He was a singer and he played the guitar, so music was always around. ~ Kris Allen

My father slapped my thighs with a variety of meats until I began to cry and sulked in the corner. I later became a musician ~ Thom Yorke

I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music. ~ Laura Mvula

What motivates me is just to do a really, really good job at something. If I were a better musician, I probably would've ended up as one. ~ Stewart Butterfield

My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career. ~ Jon Secada

In the end, worship can never be a performance, something you're pretending or putting on. It's got to be an overflow of your heart ... Worship is about getting personal with God, drawing close to God. ~ Matt Redman

Here's the thing about Red Sox fans, or actually just fans from that region, in general: they appreciate the effort. And if you mail it in or if you give 80 percent, even with a win, they'll let you know that's not how you do it. They want - if it's comedian, if it's a musician, bring us your best show. ~ Dane Cook

I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined. ~ Frank Black

When you are listening to music it is better to cover your eyes than your ears. ~ Jose Bergamin

While not a musician, my father was a music agent for years before becoming pop culture icon Famous Amos. ~ Shawn Amos