My Listener Quotes

#1. Four years after my father's death, when the subject of parents came up in conversation i would relate the information in a flat, matter-of-fact tone eager to detect in my listener the flinch of grief that eluded me.

Alison Bechdel

#2. When I write, I am gossiping. Writing to whisper the story, whether good or bad to my listener.

Sonia Rumzi

#3. If I complain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty and goodness of God and tempt my listener to do the same.

Jerry Bridges

#4. I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too.

Sandra Cisneros

#5. There are records that, in my opinion, only reach their full potential when the listener is disoriented.

Henry Rollins

#6. I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

Margaret Oliphant

#7. Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.

Nanci Griffith

#8. In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.

Renzo Piano

#9. My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.

Curtis Mayfield

#10. I don't want it to be all that self-conscious or artificial, but it really grows out of my having invented myself as a listener so that I could hear her voice.

Russell Banks

#11. I listen more to music when I'm on my computer. I'm into the latest YouTube thing. I'm a nanosecond kind of listener, but if I'm driving I would be listening to a Merle Haggard box set. It's a weird experience listening to 'Working Man Blues' by Merle Haggard and cruising around in a Porsche.

Jason McCoy

#12. My whole life is geared to play guitar. I play what I want when I want and I hope the listener gets as much pleasure listening to the music as I get playing it.

Jim Sullivan

#13. I am a learner, my desire is to be a good listener and to have a teachable spirit in my life time.

Euginia Herlihy

#14. To lose such an important listener in life is like losing my shadow. With no shadow, does a person truly exist under the sun? With no listener, does a person really have a voice? Silence means so many things to human beings. Some of them are unbearable.

Reeve Lindbergh

#15. I want my music to be accessible to every listener because I know that I really have something to say in terms of really, you know, removing thorns from people, thorns that really makes us unaware that we are bleeding with these thorns, like pain, grief, jealousy and so on.

Vusi Mahlasela

#16. I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

Clint Eastwood

#17. My solo album is different from the Black Eyed Peas albums because I'm a singer first and foremost. There are more ballads and more intimacy between me and the listener because sometimes when you're in a group you don't have space to air out your dirty laundry.

Fergie

#18. A story from beginning to end that might entertain, teach, or simply bore your listener. It's all in the delivery, my dear."

He got a smug look on his face as he scooted his posterior deeper into the chair and took his pipe between his teeth. "I'm just better at it than most.

Karen L Milstein

#19. I know that everyone who listens to radio creates you in a visual image that they need you to have. Whatever that is, I thought, let them have it. Let me be who the listener needs me to be and let me not contradict that with the reality of my photograph and risk disappointing them.

Terry Gross

#20. Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.

Frank Sinatra

#21. As a child, I was an observer, a listener for the stories of grown-ups. I led a quiet, solitary life with my mother, interrupted in the evenings by the arrival of my father who preferred to live in a state of emergency.

Susan Shreve

#22. In the beginning, I was searching for myself in my music. My music was for me. I didn't have the mental room to be conscious of the listener; I wrote to save myself.

Ayumi Hamasaki

#23. I think, when I started writing songs, my voice just became another tool. It wasn't something that I was going to try desperately to woo a listener. As long as I'm using my voice in a way that helps people understand what I'm trying to say, then I feel like I'm doing all right.

Laura Mvula

#24. Studying design has made me a much, much more astute observer of this aspect of business. And I'm working mightily to improve my empathic skills. I've dramatically improved my ability to read facial expressions - and I'm trying to be a better, more attentive listener.

Daniel H. Pink

#25. Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry.

Anonymous

#26. I have sometimes been told that my music is 'difficult' for the listener.

Roger Sessions

#27. I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

Benjamin Britten

#28. My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Dave Grohl

#29. I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

William H Gass

#30. My mother was a listener. I'm a talker. I'm very comfortable talking.

Diane Keaton

#31. But most of all in the last couple of years I have been listening. As a journalist, I learned to listen. It is amazing how much people will tell you if you listen in the right way. Rob, my PA, says that I can listen like a vacuum cleaner. Always beware of somebody who is a really good listener.

Terry Pratchett

#32. I am a patient listener, but opinionated to the point of stubbornness when my mind is made up.

Walt Disney

#33. It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make the reader or listener say, 'My what a clever ad.' It is the purpose of advertising to make the reader say, 'I believe I'll buy one when I'm shopping tomorrow'.

Morris Hite

#34. Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.

John Coltrane

#35. I don't feel any obligation to make my intentions for a song accessible to a listener or an audience. I'm not interested in conveying anything to them so much as what's best for me.

J. Tillman

#36. My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds.

Wallace Shawn

#37. Coming from an Asian culture, I was always taught to respect my elders, to be a better listener than a talker.

Lisa Ling

#38. Lyrically I like to use themes that make the listener use his or her imagination, and to give a little of the lessons I've learned in my own life.

Ronnie James Dio

#39. Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.

David Bowie

#40. Some of the best things that have happened in my stories have happened seemingly of their own accord. The writer becomes a listener, just writing things down as they come.

Will Hobbs

#41. My intention has been, often, to say what I had to say in a way that would exemplify it; that would, conceivably, permit the listener to experience what I had to say rather than just hear about it. - John Cage

Kay Larson

#42. When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more,' goes the old ballad. But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.

Ruskin Bond

#43. In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

Bob Edwards

#44. I think radio plays are my favourite medium, as they make the listener work and create and contribute in a way that TV and film can never do, and they have an immediacy that written prose often lacks.

Neil Gaiman

#45. I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is.

Erykah Badu

#46. I'm a good listener, you know. My gran used to say that's why you've got two ears and one mouth. I just truly love what I do and treat it with a lot of respect and all these relationships in the music business that people talk about.

Johnny Reid

#47. I can't imagine how people will react to my music. For me, it's a really fluid process from one record to the next, but it's really up to the listener.

Jenny Lewis

#48. The difference between pushing my agenda or just living my life determines whether a listener feels like a target or a friend.

Richard Foth

#49. When I think about my new CD, the word 'joy' comes to mind. I sincerely hope that each listener will feel the earth, spirit, and aggressive creativity emanating from this album.

George Duke

#50. I noticed things in my computer music that were getting old, and I started to figure out that this has to do with the way the listener interacts with music.

Paul Lansky

#51. My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.

Meshell Ndegeocello

#52. For most of my life I've been a listener. At least in the beginning, I think the reason I listened so intently was to have a chance of hearing the train before it ran over me.

Steve Rasnic Tem

#53. I'm not deluded enough to think that everyone who knows my name is a listener. You know, I hope that part of that interest - part of that public interest - has to do with me still making records that people like.

John Mayer

#54. I think the best part about my dad being gay is that I'm much more open-minded. I feel more at peace and I'm a good listener. I learned so much from (my dad's partner) John. How would I have turned out if this weren't my life?

Judith E. Snow

#55. I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.

Arvo Part

#56. I have this ideal listener, as John Cage did. This listener doesn't bring expectations that my music will fit into some part of music history, or that it will do any particular thing. This listener is just open to listening.

Missy Mazzoli

#57. Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.

Ian McEwan

#58. I would just like a woman someday, somewhere, at some point in my life to say to me, 'You're a great listener.' Haven't heard it yet, and that's a superior compliment to get from a woman. But I'm going to work on it.

Ashton Kutcher

#59. To do my job well, I have to be a good listener. The listening is so much more important than the talking.

Brad Listi

#60. I don't want to sing songs that aren't worth while. Time is so rare. I just don't want to waste the listener's time and I think that my songs don't do that. That's what I pray for. I want songs that really touch people's hearts.

Rodney Atkins

#61. I had school debt I had to pay off. Sometimes I would do commercials to get me through. And so I kept bumping along like that and learning different things. I knew I wanted to get out on my own. I was just super-curious, and I was a good listener. And that got me through.

Susan Sarandon

#62. I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There's a fine line.

Macklemore

#63. I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

Peggy Lee

#64. If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand.

Paul Lansky

#65. My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Pat Metheny

#66. I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.

Edgard Varese

#67. I love helping friends, and I like to think I am a good listener and supportive. I'm also just kind of nosy, so it would satisfy my need to know other people's stories.

Rachel Platten

#68. For every word their is a listener and probably my words don't suit your ears. So please don't accuse me of being ambiguous

Me

#69. Woman's work as a listener is never done ... I thought I'd spent too much of my life listening for some damn man - for my father and now for my husband.

Adela Rogers St. Johns

#70. I want to satisfy the listener, exactly. I want to entertain the audience. I want the people to leave the show with the feeling I used to leave shows with when I was young, and I couldn't get over it for another three or four days after it. I just kept reliving the set in my mind.

Bradford Cox

#71. In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

Sonia Sotomayor

#72. Just because you've written a song doesn't mean that you have pulled through. There are definitely songs where I embodied someone else's pain and that was purely to serve the listener because I knew they needed to hear something. But most of the good stuff comes from my life.

Mat Kearney

#73. I look for songs that the listener, when they hear it, they believe what I'm singing about, that I know what I'm singing about. That's my whole deal. I try to choose songs that a male or a female can perform and relate to.

Patty Loveless

#74. I am a spinner of yarns; hopefully to transport the reader or listener to places I see in my minds eye.

Barry Tyrrell

#75. In my opinion, being an effective leader requires being an effective listener. The most productive leaders are usually those who are consistently willing to listen and learn.

John Wooden

#76. If I had an ear 2 confide in
I would cry among my treasured friends
But who do u know that stops that long
to help another carry on
The world moves fast and it would rather pass u by
than 2 stop and c what makes u cry

Tupac Shakur

#77. My biggest lesson ... was to try and create narrators that were believable ... so the listener becomes really invested in the story or the song.

Kristian Bush

#78. I don't speak a lot when I get home, during the season. It's great. I just get to sit and listen. My wife gets to tell me whatever she wants to tell me, and I don't talk. I'm too exhausted to talk, so I'm a very good listener.

Thomas Sadoski