Life Of A Musician Quotes

#1. You can always boil down the life of a musician to touring, playing, and writing.

Tift Merritt

#2. I love the life of a musician but I live the life of a bodybuilder.

Warren Cuccurullo

#3. I realized, that the life of a musician, even of a very lucky, very successful musician, wasn't really the life I wanted: I hate travel, I hate living out of suitcases, I hate the constant anxiety of being on stage.

Garth Greenwell

#4. I knew nothing of the real life of a musician, but I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion.

Lawrence Welk

#5. The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre ... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.

Plato

#6. You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

#7. Those who have expressed doubts and misgivings about their ability to live this kind of life shouldn't try, because being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are.

Billy Joel

#8. 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

#9. The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

Dave Brubeck

#10. When you're a touring musician, you're always turning over new rocks and there's always a certain level of tension in your life.

Mark Kozelek

#11. As I moved through my life as a statue and later as a musician, I started to understand. There's a difference between wanting to be looked at and wanting to be seen.

Amanda Palmer

#12. Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments.

Hector Berlioz

#13. I'm a very typical yoga-practicing musician; I do it when I can. I'm not hardcore about it. A lot of my lyrics talk about celebrating life and working through pain. I think that's what yoga's about, getting rid of, moving energy and letting it flow through you.

Brett Dennen

#14. In Old English they don't say I had a dream, but there's another usage of the word - "life is but a dream," to be corny about it. It's implied with eyes wide open, rather than asleep. But I'm not a philosopher to explain myself. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a musician.

Tom Verlaine

#15. I never really had male influences in my life. Steady, male influences. And that's what I wanna be for my family. As a musician, I definitely will attain everything that I set out to. I work very hard. But more important to me is that my family is taken care of.

Trey Songz

#16. I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

Keri Hilson

#17. A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.

Billy Joel

#18. I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.

Michael Gira

#19. My life won't be a series of either/ors - musician or actor, rock or country, straitlaced or rebellious, this or that, yes or no. The real choices in life aren't that simple.

Miley Cyrus

#20. I do a lot of touring, yes, and I have my whole life ever since I was 19 years old, when I used to tour with Al Jarreau, Rickie Lee Jones, and Jackson Browne as a side musician.

Vonda Shepard

#21. As the musician straineth his strings, and yet he breaketh none of them, but maketh thereby a sweeter melody and better concord; so God, through affliction makes His own better unto the fruition and enjoying of the life to come.

Daniel Cawdry

#22. But when I was a teenager, the idea of spending the rest of my life in a factory was real depressing. So the idea that I could become a musician opened up some possibilities I didn't see otherwise.

Wayne Kramer

#23. The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.

Plato

#24. Being a musician, especially at the major label where you work for so long, it becomes a cycle. Write a record, make a record, tour. It's just this cycle, and I don't think there's any life built into it with time to assimilate what's going on in front of you and what's going on in your head.

Art Alexakis

#25. I'm really clear about what my life mission is now. There's no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I've returned to the athlete I once was. I'm integrating all the parts of me - jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher - and becoming stronger as a result.

Alanis Morissette

#26. Growing up, my imagined life as a musician was something along the lines of me lounging in a Learjet en route to a swelling outdoor amphitheatre on a dazzling summer's eve.

Kat Edmonson

#27. Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

John Coltrane

#28. I guess people assume I have some sort of totally magical life, but I'm a working musician, fortunately. I've worked on my craft, and I'm very fortunate I've been able to survive in a very competitive industry and enjoy my success. It's not easy.

Debbie Harry

#29. To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

#30. I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young ... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

Gustav Mahler

#31. music is the great love of the People. If we sing a beautiful song, if we faithfully remember all the words, the People will never abandon us. Without the musician, all life would be loneliness.

Madeleine Thien

#32. I never said that I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I didn't know. I thought I was going to be a singer and musician. That's what I had been doing, for a huge part of my life.

Adan Canto

#33. If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Albert Einstein

#34. I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.

Maxine Hong Kingston

#35. No form of art repeats or imitates successfully all that can be said by another; the writer conveys his experience of life along a channel of communication closed to painter, mathematician, musician, film-maker.

Storm Jameson

#36. The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.

Manfred Mann

#37. Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I get too much to drink, I can't even finger well, let alone play decent ideas ... You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation.

Charlie Parker

#38. Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician.

Kenny G

#39. We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

Michel De Montaigne

#40. She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinary life, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music with diabolical accuracy of judgment.

Anonymous

#41. I was at a time of my life of making choices, I suppose: am I a writer, am I a visual artist? And when I was a teenager. I thought I would be a film-maker. Am I a musician? If so, what kind of musician am I?

David Toop

#42. I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.

Iggy Pop

#43. I think a valid approach to being a musician is to take all of the experience of your life and filter it through your personality and send it back out there, and that's what art is.

David Sanborn

#44. In the day-to-day life of a traveling musician, it's easy to miss so many details. The world goes by at high-speed; it will take your breath away.

Eric Burdon

#45. I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

#46. Maybe I was being naive. Even stupid. I mean, who would trade Standford for being homeless? [ ... ] But I had to know if I was meant to be a musician. Otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life regretting it. Asking myself ... what if?

Tara Kelly

#47. My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.

Stan Getz

#48. The goal as a musician, I think, is to be able to make music as a living for the rest of your life.

Taylor Momsen

#49. 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

#50. I played Woodstock in '69, and it really changed my life. Without a doubt, it was the single event that really changed the way I felt about music. Up to that point, I hadn't really thought of myself as more serious musician, and I didn't really have that much interest in pop music.

Edgar Winter

#51. It is not a profession to be a pianist and musician. It is a philosophy, a conception of life that cannot be based on good intentions or natural talent. First and foremost there must be a spirit of sacrifice.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

#52. What a young musician's dream, to say, "Look at those chrome drums. Look at that 22-inch ride cymbal. I'll have those." It was one of those unparalleled exciting days of your life.

Neil Peart

#53. Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life.

Greta Salpeter

#54. Well I'm not a storyteller, as far as telling stories which relate to experiences in my own life. That's not what I do. I write songs which have a narrative and attempt to make sense and tell a story - sure! But whenever I hear the word "storyteller" I think of a children's musician.

Freedy Johnston

#55. I applied at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard after my band broke up. I really wanted to work there because it involved the love of my life, music. It was also located on the world famous Sunset Strip, a place I dreamed of going to ever since I was a teenager in the 80's to become a rock star.

K.D. Sanders

#56. The Lord calls each one of His children, no matter what his occupation-lawyer, doctor, maintenance man, carpenter, accountant, athlete, musician, teacher, homeschooling mom, and so on-to have a real prayer life.

Mike Bickle

#57. Truth grows gradually in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time

Anne Michaels

#58. If you strive to become a good human being with the qualities of generosity, humility and having reverence for life ... just maybe you'll become a great musician.

Charlie Haden