Top 100 Microphone Quotes
#1. Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, don't sit in the dark hiding. It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.
Billy Connolly
#2. Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.
Harlan Ellison
#3. Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he's saying. You can't put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can't hear what he's saying.
Compay Segundo
#4. When I was growing up, I grew up in church
my father was a pastor
so when I was growing up in Trinidad, I'd close all the windows in the church and go in the church every day after school and get a little microphone and pretend all these people were in the pews, and I would sing to them.
Heather Headley
#5. I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting.
Marc Maron
#6. Gowdy had a love affair with the microphone and the fans had a love affair with him. American sports fans truly lost an icon, a legend who never felt he was bigger than anyone else. He had that humility that made him special, and he made everyone feel like they were so important.
Dick Vitale
#7. Centuries of perfectly-pitched heartbreak resound through Les' microphone as Stella and I embrace in a slow dance.
Daven Anderson
#8. I've never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.
Autre Ne Veut
#9. She turned back to the reporter, holding out the microphone. I'm not an expert, I'm a survivor. I hope you can learn how to be one yourself.
Rose Wynters
#10. To be successful in the world of art you must, of course, have talent, although very small talents have gone very far in this age. Just as the microphone gave volume to voices that had none, so does the science of press-agentry magnify limited skills into highly saleable properties.
Marya Mannes
#11. Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp,
Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp,
Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll,
Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy.
On the microphone:
I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
Kool Keith
#12. Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.
David Byrne
#13. Well I have a microphone and you don't so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!
Adam Sandler
#14. Well actually I'm not a man but a carrot. The band was eating salads one day and a carrot fell off of the salad bar onto a microphone and the band realized that they had just discovered something brilliant. Me.
Thom Yorke
#15. It's not enough to be able to spell "magnificence" in your bedroom. You have to be able to spell it at the microphone during the spelling bee.
Cynthia Lewis
#16. Traditionally, an engineer is responsible for capturing sound - microphone choice, gear, etc. A producer can have a number of different responsibilities - anything from songwriting to judging performances - setting mood, and (perhaps most importantly) choosing which songs to work on!
Matt Squire
#17. Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.
Tony Bennett
#18. It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.
Zadie Smith
#19. 'Can't Get Closer' I originally recorded in about half an hour, just on my bed with a microphone. I actually re-recorded the song with a cleaner vocal take, but I decided to leave the demo version on there, just because I felt that instant where it was created is what captured the most emotion.
Sampha
#20. Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.
Chelsea Handler
#21. Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, believed that sound waves never completely die away, that they persist, fainter and fainter, masked by the day-to-day noise of the world. Marconi thought that if he could only invent a microphone powerful enough, he would be able to listen to ancient times.
Hari Kunzru
#22. In America, we have bible-reading applications: every single one of those applications asks permission to turn on your microphone, your camera; it wants permission to read your e-mails and the right to send e-mails wherever it chooses.
John McAfee
#23. When I'm the person in front of the microphone, and I'm the person in the light, I want to reflect and refract the light onto places where they need the attention, where I don't need it.
Don Cheadle
#24. I feel like something I've wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out.
Olivia Holt
#25. There aint a microphone brave enough to give me feedback!
Canibus
#26. Toph kicks over the microphone stand in a grand, asshole gesture, and the three of them jump off the stage. It's a little less dramatic when they have to come right back to take apart their stuff before the next band comes on.
Stephanie Perkins
#27. To have a young person speak back, to hand him the microphone for his first-person utterances, you'd have to have an imagined architecture, otherwise people would say you're putting words in their mouths.
Fred D'Aguiar
#28. I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.
Michael Caine
#29. CHEERS, CARTER. At least you have the sense to hand me the microphone for important things.
Honestly, he drones on and on about his plans for the Apocalypse, but he makes no plans at all for the school dance. My brother's priorities are severely skewed.
Sadie Kane
Rick Riordan
#30. We designed a number of features from the ground up, like custom display and optics technology with very high refresh rates and pixel density. We added integrated 3-D audio, a built-in microphone so you can speak to friends inside virtual worlds, and precise mechanical adjustment systems.
Brendan Iribe
#31. He waits until dark. Marie-Laure sits in the mouth of the wardrobe, the false back open, and listens to her uncle switch on the microphone and the transmitter in the attic. His mild voice speaks numbers into the garret. Then music plays, soft and low, full of cellos tonight . . .
Anthony Doerr
#32. With a camera, a microphone, and sufficient cash, you, too, can craft your own version of the world and emblazon it with a premium of fear over facts. (Be warned though: Paranoid schizophrenia makes for compelling film, but it's no way of life.)
David T. Hardy
#33. You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
Chris Hardwick
#34. This microphone is the key to the universe. When you have this in your hands, you are the most powerful person in the whole world, let's get!.
Hayley Williams
#35. [M]y mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone. And while she may be proud of me tonight, I've got to tell you, Mom, I'm even more proud of you. Thank you, Mom.
Julian Castro
#36. We saw very little of the real Jack Buck behind the microphone. He would touch people in ways that we will never know. Jack was much more than just an announcer.
Ozzie Smith
#37. Actually, when a tree falls, it creates shock waves. And when the shock waves reach an ear or an artificial mechanism like a microphone, they're transmitted into what we call sound," you said. "The shock waves themselves are not sound.
Jan Ellison
#39. I loved the Cure and Bauhaus and the Smiths. The people in my town weren't privy to that kind of music and I got abused. I discovered the microphone to get out some of that angst.
Fred Durst
#40. I'm afraid the camera got smashed against the side of the Space Hotel, Mr. President, Shuckworth replied. The President said a very rude word into the microphone and ten million children across the nation began repeating it gleefully and got smacked by their parents.
Roald Dahl
#41. I'm not a journalist any more. I don't have to stick a microphone up somebody's nostril and I don't have a camera lens behind my shoulder, I think people talk to me in a much franker way.
Gerald Seymour
#42. You know, every time it comes, every time that light comes on or every time that camera comes on, every time that microphone comes on, the Mac Man seek and destroy.
Bernie Mac
#43. Stop the tape, cut the paper! I will just write another poem and grab a microphone and push record again!
Delano Johnson
#44. I want to get to the point where one day I don't have to have anything but a rug and a microphone stand on stage and still be able to sell out places like Madison Square Garden, like Bruce Springsteen does.
Demi Lovato
#45. I don't write for an auditorium full of people. I don't write for the microphone; I write for the page.
Billy Collins
#46. As for radio and movies, I like the movies better, although the work is much harder. The cinema has microphone technique, staging, and glamour all wrapped up into one.
Rudy Vallee
#47. Tommy pointed out before removing something from his pocket and passing it to me. I turned the small radio and microphone over in my hands. "I'm not going on a mob bust." "It's that or you wear one of those ridiculous Bluetooth headsets, which are about as secure as yelling really loud.
Steve McHugh
#48. You won't see me at a microphone singing and tapping my foot. I spend a lot of money on sets, costumes and sound. I believe people deserve a show. I'm a singer, musician, dancer. I work hard, and I'm soaking wet when I come off.
Barbara Mandrell
#49. I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.
Bob Edwards
#50. I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect.
Brian McKnight
#51. For me, talking about church in front of a bunch of Christians means approaching a microphone and attempting to explain the most important, complicated, beautiful, and heart-wrenching relationship of my life in thirty minutes or less without yelling or crying or saying any cuss words.
Rachel Held Evans
#52. I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.
Ian Anderson
#53. I would borrow the microphone and stuff it down the front of my pants, examining myself from every angle in the mirror
Augusten Burroughs
#54. I do a long sound check. I get there at noon on the day of a show and sit behind the piano and then walk around with the microphone. Then I feel like I have done my homework.
John Tesh
#55. I don't like to use a microphone around my head while I'm teaching so I had to learn how to project from my stomach more.
Gonjasufi
#56. (on Katharine Hepburn) She talks at you as though you were a microphone; she lectured the hell out of me on temperance and the evils of drink. She doesn't give a damn how she looks. I don't think she tries to be a character. I think she is one.
Humphrey Bogart
#57. Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.
Adam McKay
#58. I walk around and think about things. When I come across a thought that makes me laugh, I write it down. Then, at night, I say the thought to people through a microphone. I don't think about politics or pop culture very much, so those thoughts don't often make it to the microphone.
Demetri Martin
#59. I went from MC to being MS, this microphone controller is the motivational speaker.
Lupe Fiasco
#60. And when I'm on the microphone you best to wear your sweater,
Cause I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenails,
Oh hell, there he go again.
Big Boi
#61. It's weird but I've never really been the type to have fixations on the leading man actor. I've always been drawn more to the rock star. I love a guy on the microphone commanding an audience.
Amanda Crew
#62. What is the value of sticking a microphone in a man's face right after he has learned of his wife's death?
Jessica Savitch
#63. It's naturally kind of humiliating and strange to have a microphone; when you're young you just make movies, you don't worry about all the peripheral stuff that comes with it.
Don Hertzfeldt
#64. It's always been my dream to look like Mariah Carey in my photos with a microphone. I don't know how she does it. When she sings, she looks perfect.
Solange Knowles
#65. I was listening to the radio the other day in California and one of our songs came on and I jumped because I couldn't find my microphone. Now that's damage.
Henry Rollins
#66. Well I'm a sire, I set the microphone on fire,
Rap styles vary, and carry like Mariah
Inspectah Deck
#67. I never know what I'm going to say as I walk up to the microphone. I try to be in the moment. I try to go deeper into myself. I discover things on stage that I don't discover off stage about me.
Greg Fitzsimmons
#68. It was crushingly disappointing as a fan of The Simpsons to discover that it's just you in a room speaking into a microphone. I thought I was going to become friends with Homer Simpson, but unfortunately none of them are real.
Russell Brand
#69. I'd been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and I suddenly saw what I'd been doing wrong. I'd been singing too loud. One night I was listening to a record by Lester Young, the horn player, and it came to me. Relax, just relax. It's all going to be all right.
Marvin Gaye
#70. For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.
Chad Smith
#71. Well, once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you're past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it, you know.
Jarvis Cocker
#72. When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.
Paul McCartney
#73. I'm lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on - I do stand-up comedy, and I have 'SNL.' That's where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I'm in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it's in the hands of the reader.
Michael Che
#74. I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn't picked me up.
Noam Chomsky
#75. I have a no-apology policy. No apologies for jokes. I apologize in my real life all the time. I say ridiculous things, I make mistakes constantly. But when I'm on stage, I'm at a microphone ... it's a joke!
Kathy Griffin
#76. I always say the best applause you can get is when you walk from backstage up to your microphone at a concert. It's also nice to walk up to the mike at an awards show, and that applause is great, too, but the best is when your fans are cheering for you.
Dierks Bentley
#77. The truth is I've always been a Christian. What's amazing, is that the flaws that come with Christianity are really weird, because mine have a microphone and a camera attached to them. Most people don't have to live under that microscope.
Steve Harvey
#78. The table was her stage. The mobile phone was the microphone. And the new moon was the spotlight. That kind of magic only Nana could make it happen.
Ai Yazawa
#79. To be a great band it's like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player's in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player's coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.
Scott Weiland
#80. I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.
Conor Oberst
#81. Can you imagine someone handing Peter a microphone on Sunday morning and whispering, "Okay, now, you've got twenty minutes. We have to get the people out of here promptly because the chariot races start at one o'clock"?
Jim Cymbala
#82. It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.
Julie London
#83. A microphone fiend; I make beats do back flips.
O.C.
#84. She put Randy Travis on the CD player and sang at the top of her lungs. She found that the wine bottle made an excellent fake microphone and she wondered if anyone would love her forever and ever, amen.
Melissa Ecker
#85. It's not hard to figure out who has the power in any large gathering in our mediated culture: they are the ones with a microphone, their image projected larger than life above the crowd.
Andy Crouch
#86. There are few things quite so effortlessly enjoyable as watching an eminent person getting in a huff and flouncing out of a television interview, often with microphone trailing.
Craig Brown
#87. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument - learning to do your craft - that's the most important thing! It's not about what goes on in a computer!
Dave Grohl
#88. The visual quality of the cameras now is such that you can shoot with available light, and if people are willing to mount a microphone on the camera and maybe even on the subject, then you're good to go.
Brian Lindstrom
#89. I love a microphone and a big crowd; I'm an entertainer, I guess.
Kary Mullis
#90. My name's Saint," I whispered gravely into the microphone. "Are you ready to confess your sins?
Rachel Van Dyken
#91. Sinatra, here's a guy who plays a tough guy in all his movies, but was allowed to be vulnerable when he stepped up to the microphone.
Michael Bolton
#92. I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I'd go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on 'Laugh-In,' Flip Wilson.
Bernie Mac
#93. It's funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.
Ashley Judd
#94. Johnny Gentle, the first U.S. President ever to swing his microphone around by the cord during his Inauguration speech.
David Foster Wallace
#95. Now, you can just get a laptop, get some software, put a microphone on it and make a record. You have to know how to do it. It does help if you've had 35 or 40 years of experience in the studio. But, it still levels the playing field so artists can record their own stuff.
Roger McGuinn
#96. No, I wasn't trying to make Nat Turner look stupid. I was trying to make him more human. More like me. Angry, impotent, confused about his own sexuality. Wait a minute, that didn't come out right. Is that microphone really on?
William Styron
#97. I'm an actor. Whether I'm on stage, in front of a camera or a microphone, what I do is the same - although with videogames it requires a lot of imagination.
Nolan North
#98. With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.
Bob Newhart
#99. Being outraged about two men or two women, it requires absolutely no work on the ground. So you can be outraged and you can be an armchair activist, engage in nothing and just simply get on the microphone and say, "I don't believe in X, Y, and Z, and it's terrible," and you can call them names.
Otis Moss III
#100. I'm trying to capture a moment. It's not about the singer at the microphone. I'm trying to look for, like, a moment in between.
Danny Clinch
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