Quotes About Billy Joel

#1. Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

Ben Folds

#2. If it seems like I've been lost in 'lets remember', If it seems I'm gettin' older and missin' my younger days, well you shoulda known me much better, cause the past is something that never got in my way.

Billy Joel

#3. Do what you love, and you'll always love what you do

Billy Joel

#4. They're sharing a drink called loneliness, but at least its better than drinking alone.

Billy Joel

#5. You should never argue with a crazy mind, you ought to know my now.

Billy Joel

#6. I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

Billy Joel

#7. Like a boxer in a title fight, you have to walk in that ring alone.

Billy Joel

#8. We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

Billy Joel

#9. If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.

Billy Joel

#10. She's got a smile that heals me.

Billy Joel

#11. If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings.

Billy Joel

#12. You can't criticize Bob Dylan's singing. You have to respect Billy Joel as a brilliant poet. You can't tell me there's a better rock band ever than Led Zeppelin. And if you speak during the Eagles' "Last Resort," we're done. I'm just asking for seven minutes. This stuff really matters, you know.

Charlie Sheen

#13. What if she figures out you're not very smart?

Billy Joel

#14. I once believed in causes, too. Had my pointless point of view. Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

Billy Joel

#15. Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel.

George Harrison

#16. I happen to be a guy who also plays the piano and sings, so people automatically associate me with Billy Joel.

Gavin DeGraw

#17. Don't wait for answers, just take your chances. Don't ask me why.

Billy Joel

#18. Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania.

Billy Joel

#19. For whatever reason, not all people are born with the particular gift of being able to express ourselves through music. And, believe me, it is a gift.

Billy Joel

#20. We might be laughing a bit too loud, but that never hurt no one

Billy Joel

#21. She's got a way about her,
And everywhere she goes,
a million dreams of love surround her,
everywhere.

Billy Joel

#22. Well I never had a place that I could call my very own/That's all right, my love, 'cause you're my home.

Billy Joel

#23. Well we're waiting here in Allentown For the Pennsylvania we never found For the promises our teachers gave If we worked hard If we behaved So the graduations hang on the wall But they never really helped us at all No they never taught us what was real

Billy Joel

#24. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#25. Hope you don't think this is Billy Joel unplugged. I'm a piano player. I'm already unplugged.

Billy Joel

#26. As an atheist you have to rationalize things ... Then you have to try and make some sort of sense out of your problems. And if you try and find you can't, you have no choice but to be good and scared
but that's okay!

Billy Joel

#27. Forced to recognize our inhumanity, our reason coexists with our insanity. And though we choose between reality and madness, it's either sadness or euphoria.

Billy Joel

#28. It's OK if you mess up. You should give yourself a break.

Billy Joel

#29. People always think I was just playing in a piano bar, but I only did that for about six months. The rest of the time I was playing in bands.

Billy Joel

#30. I keep telling people: Don't make me the poster boy for AA because I don't know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.

Billy Joel

#31. I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.

Billy Joel

#32. I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.

Billy Joel

#33. I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy.

Billy Joel

#34. I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

Billy Joel

#35. There ain't no island left for islanders like me.

Billy Joel

#36. It's a little intimidating to walk into a studio and know that you're going to sing a duet with Barbra Streisand.

Billy Joel

#37. I don't care what consequence it brings, I have been a fool for lesser things.

Billy Joel

#38. There are people who have lost every trace of human kindness.

Billy Joel

#39. Don't go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before.

Billy Joel

#40. I listen to Billy Joel. He is fabulous. I saw him with Elton John when they toured together, it was so great.

Marlee Matlin

#41. What will it take for you to believe in me, the way that I believe in you?

Billy Joel

#42. I've reached the age where competence is a turn-on.

Billy Joel

#43. Though you can see when you're wrong, you know you can't always see when you're right.

Billy Joel

#44. Rock and roll just used to be for kicks, now a days it's politics.

Billy Joel

#45. I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.

Billy Joel

#46. Some love is just a lie of the heart, the cold remains of what began with a passionate heart.

Billy Joel

#47. The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions.

Billy Joel

#48. And in the evening
After the fire and the light
One thing is certain: Nothing can hold back the light
Time is relentless
And as the past disappears
We're on the verge of all things new

Billy Joel

#49. It was so easy living day by day Out of touch with the rhythm and blues But now I need a little give and take The New York Times, The Daily News.

Billy Joel

#50. I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

Billy Joel

#51. You're having a hard time and lately you don't feel so good; You're getting a bad reputation in your neighborhood. It's alright, it's alright; Sometimes that's what it takes. You're only human, you're allowed to make your share of mistakes.

Billy Joel

#52. I always wrote the music first, and the music gave me the mood and the lyrics were pretty much put in to give you a map, where that mood came from and where it's going. But my first love was really the music itself, and I guess I've gone back to that.

Billy Joel

#53. There will be miracles After the last war is won Science and poetry rule in the new world to come Prophets and angels Gave us the power to see What an amazing future there will be

Billy Joel

#54. I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

Billy Joel

#55. Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue ...

Billy Joel

#56. When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

Billy Joel

#57. I respect Billy Joel, but I'm not a guy who's gonna sit down and listen to the entire 'Essential Billy Joel.'

Garth Risk Hallberg

#58. Videos destroyed the vitality of rock and roll. Before that, music said, "Listen to me." Now it says, "Look at me."

Billy Joel

#59. So before we end and then begin, we'll drink a toast to how it's been. A few more hours to be complete, a few more nights on satin sheets. A few more times that I can say, that I've loved these days.

Billy Joel

#60. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to be on a pedestal.

Billy Joel

#61. I'm carrying the weight of all the useless junk and modern man accumulates.

Billy Joel

#62. They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.

Billy Joel

#63. You can get what you want or you can just get old.

Billy Joel

#64. Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville.

Billy Joel

#65. Streetlife serenaders Have no obligations Hold no grand illusions Need no stimulation.

Billy Joel

#66. Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true. When will you realize ... Vienna waits for you.

Billy Joel

#67. I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage. I found that just surviving was a noble fight.

Billy Joel

#68. Billy Joel is an incredible musician. He just feels like one of the guys, you know. I grew up listening to his music.

Action Bronson

#69. Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so.

Billy Joel

#70. There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

Billy Joel

#71. Sergeant O'Leary is walking the beat, at night he becomes a bar tender.

Billy Joel

#72. We drown our doubts in dry champagne and soothe our souls with fine cocaine. I don't know why I even care, we get so high and get nowhere.

Billy Joel

#73. I've lived long enough to have learned, the closer you get to the fire, the more you get burned.

Billy Joel

#74. And so my child and I came to this place to meet him eye to eye and face to face. He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced. We never knew what friends we had, until we came to Leningrad.

Billy Joel

#75. We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Billy Joel

#76. I am the entertainer, the idol of my age I make all kinds of money when I go on the stage You see me in the papers, I've been in the magazines But if I go cold, I won't get sold I get put in the back in the discount rack Like another can of beans.

Billy Joel

#77. Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair, I told you dirty jokes until you smiled.

Billy Joel

#78. More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.

Billy Joel

#79. I was listening to stuff and I realized that I've had a lot of different lives. You know the theory [that says] every seven years, you have a different life? I think that's true.

Billy Joel

#80. Son, can you play me a memory. I'm not really sure how it goes. It was sad and it was sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.

Billy Joel

#81. She's the quiet type who's into heavy metal.

Billy Joel

#82. music it says all the things that words alone can never say

Billy Joel

#83. I look in the mirror and think, 'I don't look like a rock star.' I talked about this with Bono and we looked at each other and decided we look like a pair of bricklayers.

Billy Joel

#84. And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts ... Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they're for.

Billy Joel

#85. I'm kind of putting my toe back in the water and seeing how it feels. We're going to be doing stuff we haven't done for years and years and years. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this stuff flies.

Billy Joel

#86. Why don't the Beatles get back together? Why don't nobody sing of romance?

Billy Joel

#87. I see the children with their boredom and their vacant stares.

Billy Joel

#88. Hey Lord, would ya look out for her tonight, and make sure that all her dreams are sweet? Said now, would ya guide her on the roads, and make them softer for her feet? Hey Lord, would ya look out for her tonight, and make sure that she's gonna be alright, until she's home and here with me.

Billy Joel

#89. I have long admired Steinway pianos for their qualities of tone, clarity, pitch consistency, touch responsiveness, and superior craftsmanship.

Billy Joel

#90. I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.

Billy Joel

#91. Maybe this won't last very long but you feel so right and I could be wrong. Maybe I've been hoping too hard. I've gone this far and it's more than I hope for.

Billy Joel

#92. Even when I stop performing or stop making records I won't stop being creative. Songwriting is a good outlet.

Billy Joel

#93. You'll learn more from your accidents than anything that you could ever learn at school.

Billy Joel

#94. You just sit home and masturbate. The phone is going to ring soon, but you just can't wait.

Billy Joel

#95. Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for you

Billy Joel

#96. You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for

Billy Joel

#97. Working too hard can give you a heart-attack.

Billy Joel

#98. The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.

Billy Joel

#99. Every time I've held a rose,
It seems I only felt the thorns

Billy Joel

#100. I sold my house to Jerry Seinfeld.

Billy Joel