Top 100 Musician Life Quotes
#1. As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.
Ian Anderson
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. It's my fucking life and you know what, nobody invited you ... so there's the door ... see ya!
Green Day
#6. 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
#7. I had joined Yes in 1971. I was a classically trained musician who had worked with numerous artists as a session musician. I played on David Bowie's 'Life On Mars,' Cat Stevens's 'Morning Has Broken' and even on some Des O'Connor records, though I kept that quiet.
Rick Wakeman
#8. Being a musician is to live, not to survive. Surviving is going to work every day and giving up your liberty and your time. When you do music, it's a free life.
Richard Pinhas
#9. He led quite a great life, ... He was an Old Testament figure railing against the establishment - a Jewish guy from New York who became a Buddhist, a poet, a musician.
Tom Hayden
#11. I've speculated about what my life might have been like as a musician, but I'm afraid I came to the conclusion that I probably would've either been teaching piano or maybe gotten to play at Nordstrom's department store.
Condoleezza Rice
#12. 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
#13. I am a musician. My passion for music has obliterated everything in its path for my entire life.
Barry Manilow
#14. Like most artists and musicians, I considered myself detached from the political life ... but I had an insight that maybe we would have a political contribution to make in the future.
Gilberto Gil
#15. Your development as a musician will come to an eventual standtill if you do not develop yourself as a human being. Only by having a creative, expansive and inspiring life can you create creative, expansive and inspiring music.
Carl Orr
#16. My husband is a musician. He cooks and he's a chef but he also, he makes basement recordings. So many people in my life make basement recordings, so I feel very lucky, I'm surrounded by very creative people.
Dana Spiotta
#17. In my life, my parents wanted me to be a musician, I was supposed to go to Vienna to study piano. But this train wanted to go in another direction.
Golshifteh Farahani
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm.
Paul Fleischman
#22. 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
#23. I love the life of a musician but I live the life of a bodybuilder.
Warren Cuccurullo
#24. 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
#25. My dad studied at the American Conservatory in Chicago, so he lived on all those streets. He said the war probably saved his life because he'd have ended up a dead musician, with all the crazy stuff they did on Rush Street back in the day.
Kim Basinger
#26. I am perhaps the oldest musician in the world. I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life, and to say things to the world that are true.
Pablo Casals
#27. 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
#28. When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.
David Sanborn
#29. It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines]
Fergie
#30. I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.
Frank Black
#31. Possibly the whole creative whirlwind of any musician's life is based on garnering and developing and absorbing more and more experience.
Robert Plant
#32. We have oral traditions in Mali, and songs are passed down and around this way. I think in the US you can play all the time in your own room and never see another musician your whole life. We can't understand that in Mali.
Vieux Farka Toure
#33. The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.
Oscar Wilde
#34. I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.
James Taylor
#35. Being an actor is a much more structured life than being a musician.
Grant-Lee Phillips
#36. 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
#37. The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.
Billy Corgan
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Music can always be a life-changing experience, for musicians and fans, or at least life-affecting, but it depends on to what degree.
Jimmy Page
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
Sissy Spacek
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. I always wanted to be a musician, 100 percent, my whole life. I went to school, I did music theory, I did voice training and piano lessons, and while I was a decent musician, it didn't seem like enough for me. I felt like I wanted to make more than just music.
Adria Petty
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Music is not everything in life. If a young musician looks at it that way, then he can just play his instrument like putting a nail into a wall.
Joe Zawinul
#52. When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they'd teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician.
Flea
#53. I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.
Iggy Pop
#54. You can always boil down the life of a musician to touring, playing, and writing.
Tift Merritt
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. I could care less about the radio or the TV or album sales. I want that connection with people because when I'm able to walk down the street, I want them to feel like I've done something for them and helped their life because I've never felt that way about a musician.
Vince Staples
#58. 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
#59. Music plays a very important role in my life. I'm a frustrated musician. I play the drums.
Ronald Perelman
#60. I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
Criss Jami
#61. America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.
Henry Miller
#62. 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
#64. When I look back on my life, I don't have regrets about what I didn't do. If I'd become a musician, it could have ruined my life.
Clint Eastwood
#65. It's been nice to have a band and people I'm close to that I can get that understanding from and help me realize what I want to do in my life as a musician.
Blake Judd
#66. And if the day I die they ask me just how heaven was, I'll be glad I spent it with you.
Brian Logan Dales
#67. I don't want to give advice to a 19-year-old, because I want a 19-year-old to make mistakes and learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes.
Fiona Apple
#68. want to live like there's no tomorrow. Love like I'm on borrowed time. It's good to be alive." ~ Musician Jason Gray
Jason Gray
#69. 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
#70. I can honestly say my music is always going to be greater than my business side. Because I'm naturally a musician. And I don't have to get paid, I don't even have to have businesses. Business is business. And music is life.
Lil' Wayne
#71. When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.
John McLaughlin
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. I do everything I can to be the best actor I can be, the best musician I can be. I try to take risks; I try not to let fear run my life.
Robert David Hall
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. I love you all; I love you more than life itself, but you're all fucking mad.
Ozzy Osbourne
#80. 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
#81. I mean, reality sucks. The world is a cancer, and shits so bad it's scary. Everything's filthy. But you know what? One day, it's not going to be here. So be glad you know what life is. You're alive. Live.
Mitch Lucker
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. I know I'm an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I'm not a jazz musician. I'm not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It's in between these areas.
Anthony Braxton
#85. I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.
Richard Strauss
#86. As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.
Michelle Shocked
#87. When you're younger - duh - you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life.
Scott Ian
#88. 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
#89. Sometimes life gets weird. Hang in there, it gets better.
Tanner Patrick
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'
I inquire, why
'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switch
Yeah make a way to face the music like
Life savings for a mosh pit riot
Listen to a mix
Rock the tickets, higher volume
Velocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot
Criss Jami
#94. 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
#95. The whole point of working and practicing your whole life is so that you're ready when that moment arrives; when the inspiration arrives, you are ready to be at the disposal of inspiration.
John McLaughlin
#96. I was feeling privileged and self-conscious about my life as a musician, which feels self-absorbed. I can't help it, I am a musician. This is what I do.
Sufjan Stevens
#97. 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
#98. I've been a musician my whole life. I'm really enjoying making music again.
Michael Chiklis
#99. I want to do musician things and start making this my life. I want to learn - there's so much I have to learn about what it takes to be a recording artist, about what it takes to go on tour. I want to take this time and be a sponge and start meeting people and start - just start.
James Wolpert
#100. 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
