Top 100 Musical Quotes
#1. People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they're different and honest in a musical landscape that's not always like that.
Emmy Rossum
#2. I can understand why guys wouldn't be into 'Glee.' You know, that's a pretty heavy musical show. That show does, like, six songs in an episode.
Katharine McPhee
#3. I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.
David Friedman
#4. More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses
it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#5. Ahhhh ... I see. I think. Perhaps I don't. It may be easier to grasp if you presented it in a musical format. A lyrical song or two, accompanied by a whimsical dance to interpret the words.
Nicole Sager
#6. As regards the presentation of musical ideas, obviously rules of order soon appeared. Such rules of order have existed since music has existed and since musical ideas have been presented ... So we shall try to put our finger on the laws that must be at the bottom of this ...
Anton Webern
#7. I didn't think of myself as a singer. I'm an actor who recites words, and sometimes that happens to be on musical notes.
Mandy Patinkin
#8. I would love to have a varied career, like Hugh Jackman. He started in musical theater, then established himself in film, but he still does a lot of stage work. And he does it all beautifully.
Samantha Barks
#9. Oral musical traditions are rooted in assured and scrupulous faith.
Franz Liszt
#10. We all have very different musical DNA, and we all follow different musical paths. Yet there is a unifying quality about rock'n'roll that helps instill confidence and hope in millions of fans at times in their lives when little else makes sense.
Robert Hilburn
#11. Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.
Claude Levi-Strauss
#12. The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.
Brian Ferneyhough
#13. First, a poem must be magical, then musical as a sea-gull and it must hold fire as well.
Jose Garcia Villa
#14. By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth.
Michael Eric Dyson
#15. I'm just a consequence of the great musical momentum and the great changes we are going through in the world.
Shakira
#16. Then when I got to Hollywood, the first musical I did was Festival in 1977.
Gregory Harrison
#17. My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
A.R. Rahman
#18. Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.
Josiah Royce
#19. I'd like to make a film musical. That's really my dream.
Luke Evans
#20. I'm working on my life story. I'm not decided if it's going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.
Dolly Parton
#21. The possibility of a musical modernity that was not characterized by sensationalism
Alain Frogley
#22. Musical chairs or Russian roulette? Sometimes there's as much tense drama in the casting of a Hollywood movie as there is in the finished product.
Richard Corliss
#23. So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.
Trevor Nunn
#24. I'm not shutting doors on myself, in any way, within theater, musical theater, TV and film.
Lara Pulver
#25. If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
Carlisle Floyd
#26. You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#27. There has been a whole lot. Just to combine a musical career with the last year on high school was enough as it is. I didn't think it should fare as well as it did, but apparently it did.
Lene Marlin
#28. I know I have experience, having worked with the likes of legendary composers like Ilaiyaraaja. And, I've been long enough with my dear friend A. R. Rahman, and we've collaborated on several musical works. All this gives me confidence.
Sivamani
#29. How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score, tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?
Daniel Dennett
#30. I'm a weird dichotomy of nerd, sports fan, and musical theater, so I'd love to do a superhero musical on Broadway. But all the good superheroes are claimed.
Taran Killam
#31. I come from musical theater, and a lot of musical theater is about accepting fantasy. I think it is more about just being open and accepting.
Amy Adams
#32. I mean, I think I liked every band I ever played in because each band was different, each band had a different concept, and each band leader was different ... different personalities and musical tastes.
Buddy Rich
#33. My parents were not musical, and they were not effervescent people; everything was very quiet. The music that I played was loud; it used to drive them up the wall. My father died, and that was a tragedy for everybody, but suddenly I didn't have anybody to stop me from doing what I wanted to do.
Don McLean
#34. A musical takes two to five years. You have to love it to put in the years.
Harvey Fierstein
#35. Musical theatre is something that I always wanted to be a part of, and my first ever role on the West End as Joseph in 'Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat' gave me a taste for it.
Gareth Gates
#36. I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.
Francis Ford Coppola
#37. I never played a musical instrument growing up but I knew kids who did and took it very seriously.
Kevin James
#38. My musical taste is like a 16-year-old girl's when it comes to working out - Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas, Miley Cyrus. I love it all!
Jessica Capshaw
#39. My first encounter with a Kelly was not on a musical scale. It was from primary school. Dave and I went to primary school together and we were like boy scouts.
Wayne Wonder
#40. Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes.
Robert Lopez
#41. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
Herman Melville
#42. While visiting places in the South with my heart really open, I realized how important people in certain geographical spots were to me, what they symbolize, how I'm still connected to them and how much they are a part of my ancestry, both musical and real.
Rosanne Cash
#43. I've always loved musical theatre. I've always been a big kind of closeted musical theatre nerd. I really have always dreamed about being able to do musical theatre.
John Gallagher Jr.
#45. Pythagoras based musical education in the first place on certain melodies and rhythm that exercised a healing, a purifying influence on the human actions and passions, restoring 'Pristine Harmony' of the souls' faculties. He applied the same means to the curing of diseases of both body and mind ...
Porphyry
#46. Macon has such a rich musical history - and the state of Georgia, as well.
Jason Aldean
#47. I love touring, I love doing the live show and it's just like a musical artist, you just keep coming up with material and as long as you're coming up with the material and as long as audiences like it, you just keep doing it, it's your job.
Jeff Dunham
#48. I kind of date my musical discovery back to when I was 13 years old, getting my iTunes account and using that as a major tool to discover new music.
Nick Jonas
#49. I love painting still lifes because there's a feeling of musical, flowing experience. The drawing doesn't matter as much - what you're really after is a feeling of clarity and beauty.
Jacob Collins
#50. The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Jean Cocteau
#51. In truth, Jude suspected that Danny had no particular musical preferences, no strong likes or dislikes, and that the radio was just background sound, the auditory equivalent of wallpaper.
Joe Hill
#52. We shot 'High School Musical' in eight weeks. I spent longer rehearsing for 'Hairspray' than filming 'High School Musical'.
Zac Efron
#53. Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'
Edward Abbey
#54. Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
Walter Benjamin
#55. My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.
Michael Tippett
#56. I've never considered musical equipment very sacred.
Kurt Cobain
#57. The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.
Guy Pearce
#58. If politics were a musical, it would be "Promises, Promises".
Ronald Reagan
#59. For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.
James Wan
#60. In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.
Kelis
#61. We all have different musical instincts, and I think they're precious and should be respected.
Tony Levin
#62. I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.
Rob McClure
#63. Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.
Paul Bley
#64. I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special.
Gerard Butler
#65. Since the dawn of recorded music, every generation has felt shocked by the musical tastes of the next.
Dan Hill
#66. I want to be in a musical. I love music, and just to be able to mash the music and the acting together, it would be just incredible.
Stefanie Scott
#67. People say, 'What are your hobbies?' I say, 'I've been doing shows ever since I was a kid.' When I left college, all I wanted to be was a musical theater chick. I auditioned tons. It just didn't pan out.
Stephanie Courtney
#70. I have to say I have an incredible musical education because of my father.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#71. I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.
Kelli O'Hara
#72. The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#73. But I love how people who are musical, they know how to dress.
Amy Sedaris
#74. I've learned a lot from being a chameleon, sort of adopting the musical personalities of who I was playing with.
Jeremy Denk
#75. I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.
Tre Cool
#77. I can't draw a stick person. I can't play a musical instrument. But I've always had a knack for making money.
Tilman J. Fertitta
#78. I always like to think I build in historically accurate musical in-jokes that are so precise that like maybe there's 7 or 8 people in the world watching the show that will sit up and go, "Oh my God the music being played is the right kind of music!"
Bear McCreary
#80. I was chomping at the bit to get my career started - so after I took all the theater courses at Brooklyn College I enrolled in a two year program at AMDA in the city (The American Musical Dramatic Academy) I was there for 6 months and loved it.
Didi Conn
#82. Actually, the language in Shakespeare is wonderfully musical. You need to hear the music to connect with the words.
Mandy Patinkin
#83. I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.
Henri Matisse
#84. My taste is very eclectic. I love musicals, but I also love the classics. I've seen some fantastic productions. I was in a musical for 600 performances in Australia that I first saw in New York.
Jacki Weaver
#85. Compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Ezra Pound
#86. I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.
Brian Eno
#87. I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
*Fantine
Victor Hugo
#88. Think of a musical as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string, you can't put the pearls around your neck.
Marsha Norman
#89. I could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.
Michael Gira
#90. She is not a musical girl nor, intrinsically, a joyful girl; but the music of the four Swedes shook something awake inside her, and when she heard it she felt airborne and strong.
Sonya Hartnett
#91. A rock band is a mysterious thing. Somehow, every once in a while, a few individuals bump into one another, and they look exactly right together and share a focus and an aspiration and the right balance of musical similarities and differences.
Alan Light
#92. My memory bank has overflowed out of control forever. I'm surprised my smile hasn't killed me yet. I have lived an indescribable joyful, adventurous, musical dream life and it just gets better every year.
Ted Nugent
#93. I started off in musical theater, yeah. It was one of my first jobs; it was in Spring Awakening in London, which was amazing.
Jamie Blackley
#94. I don't like rock. Honestly, I like to listen to it, but it's not for me. There's a lot of musical genres that I find interesting, but they don't suit me. It's one thing to listen to different genres, but to perform a genre that isn't yours is counterproductive.
Luis Miguel
#95. Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
Plato
#96. I think of each movie as a puzzle. The fun is in solving the puzzle: finding a musical identity for the picture, however that can be summed up.
Marco Beltrami
#97. One thing is certain: We can't go back. The musical will never be the same as it was.
Harold Prince
#98. When punk rock came along, the one thing you were not supposed to be was musical.
Nick Lowe
#99. You went to your first Broadway play or musical at some point, right? Come to opera.
Sondra Radvanovsky
#100. There was something so best-musical-ever when people screamed and begged for mercy, and she could listen to a good musical all day.
Gena Showalter
