When Music Quotes

#1. The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music ... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.

Richard Eyre

#2. I love Shakira - she is such a beautiful person. She does so many good things for the world on top of making good music. And she is an awesome mom. When you are Latina, it is all about family, and to see that she prioritizes family and her career at the same time is really nice.

Becky G

#3. When you compare music, you lose the joy of listening to it.

John Scofield

#4. I started writing music when I was 15 in my bedroom, and I'd post them on MySpace, and from there it shifted to doing covers on YouTube and building my Twitter.

Tori Kelly

#5. Making music is like being the president: You can't tell people you're going to make health care free to get them behind you, but when you get that role, you don't do it.

Tyga

#6. When working out, play your favorite music loudly for an extra boost of energy.

Robert Cheeke

#7. I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

Sonny Rollins

#8. When you hear music so beautiful it gives you chills, those are angel wings brushing against you.

Tiffany Reisz

#9. When you leave the planet, you leave music behind.

Alex Van Halen

#10. I don't really understand why when I'm not making music, I feel like I can't breathe.

Son Lux

#11. They sounded really professional because they had two Vox AC 30 amplifiers. I also had an AC 30, so when you looked at it, three AC 30s, three Fenders - bloody hell, it must be a great band!

Tony Iommi

#12. When I started performing, I played acoustic music, partly because that way you don't have to worry about interacting too much with other people creatively. Asserting myself in that way was not really a strong point for me.

Patty Griffin

#13. When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit.

Hildegard Of Bingen

#14. How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#15. Sometimes when you play music, you start thinking, "This is rocking!"

Bret McKenzie

#16. Although I miss my family and friends when I'm away from Amsterdam, I've never had that feeling of missing a city like I have with New Orleans. Especially for the music.

Michiel Huisman

#17. 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

#18. I think I skipped a lot of music, like when I was 17 or 18. I didn't know about a lot of new bands because I was so immersed in older music.

Michael Kiwanuka

#19. Being able to express myself through music and art has always been when I feel the most alive.

Avril Lavigne

#20. All I knew when I moved to Nashville was that I wanted to make music in whatever shape and form I could.

Hunter Hayes

#21. When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

Bruce Beresford

#22. I'm probably at my least religious I've ever been in a while. When you're moved by music, that's always good. But I haven't been talking to God too much lately.

Stone Gossard

#23. I don't think '90s music was as significant as '60s music in terms of changing the world, but it was significant, and I think it was similarly disillusioning when you realize the mainstream just

Billy Corgan

#24. I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment.

Yo-Yo Ma

#25. What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.

Andrew Bird

#26. I was actually under a lot of heaviness when I was younger. I thought of myself as an old soul. I was very obsessed with death. Basically, I didn't really have a youth - I sublimated all that into my identity and my music.

Ariel Pink

#27. I failed music when I was a teenager.

Buzz Aldrin

#28. I was really lost for a while in my teens. I was angry. But when I found music - Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell - it was a new discovery. It was a door to this other world where I wanted to be.

Ray Lamontagne

#29. Music herself should be silent when Nicholas speaks. (on why he had stopped playing during a performance with Tsar Nicholas I in attendance)

Franz Liszt

#30. I still play music for the same reasons as when I first started; for the energy, the feeling, the interaction with others. Not for the money, ego or greed.

Jason Newsted

#31. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.

Denis Leary

#32. When you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else.

Roger Waters

#33. Obviously when you're making music, you want it to get out to as many people as possible. You want to reach as many people as you can.

Jason Aldean

#34. People are like, 'Wow you started your own record label,' and treat me like I'm some sort of innovative genius, when I'm not at all. You've got the Internet and music - you put them together, and people hear your music.

Courtney Barnett

#35. In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. Because it's someone else's reflections, not mine.

Sarah McLachlan

#36. When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth.

Bjork

#37. When I first saw Destiny's Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music, and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours; it was just so cool to me.

Lizzo

#38. I get asked if I mind when someone burns my music. I'm just flattered that people want to.

Corey Smith

#39. When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing.

Jonny Greenwood

#40. Why does every society seem to want to make music when it often seems like kind of a frill.

Tod Machover

#41. Remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don't have time anymore to read or listen to music or look at paintings or go to the movies or do whatever feeds your head now. Then you're getting old. That means they got you, after all.

Susan Sontag

#42. When we started writing this kind of music in the beginning, I didn't think that many people would listen to it, but over the years our fan base just kept growing and growing. Now, it's like we do it for us and our fans.

Jeff Hanneman

#43. The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.

Sir Arthur Sullivan

#44. There was this rapper from New Orleans, Mystikal, who when I hear his music, I hear myself. Whenever I wanna get hyped, I put on Mystikal.

Anthony Mackie

#45. Donald had reached its further edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the opposite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard.

Hugh Miller

#46. I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins.
Never did I wanna be here again,
And I don't remember why I came.

Sully Erna

#47. 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

#48. At the piano, I'm able to communicate in a way that is very intimate and direct. My approach at music is a bit like talking to a friend. You don't have to be very complicated when you speak. If you say what's in your heart, it's usually very simple.

David Lanz

#49. Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for theeany better melody in the April woods at dawnthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awakeo'night in his comfortless attic, might perchancebe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?

Robert Bridges

#50. When you start playing music when you're quite young, it's easy to stay young. And then you're touring, and you see people who've been on the road for 10 or 15 years and they just haven't grown up at all.

Charlie Fink

#51. I think there's always room for people to hear different styles of music, especially when it comes from the heart.

Pras Michel

#52. I'm really inspired by the interplay of visual art and music, a total artistic environment where there's sound and visuals. When I think about that I get stimulated and excited. It's a feeling that you can't label with words.

Black Francis

#53. I didn't try out for bands when I was younger. I got into guitars intensely a couple of years into playing so much by the time I was graduating high school I was accepted into Berklee College of Music.

John Petrucci

#54. I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.

Billy Childish

#55. There was a time when I was fighting with the decision as to whether or not a Hasidic man could go out and have a music career in the world and be involved in pop culture. For me, I was able to bring those two things together for quite some time.

Matisyahu

#56. Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.

Haruki Murakami

#57. 'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

Howard Shore

#58. I couldn't do country, with all due respect to all country music artists. My parents dressed me up with a cowboy hat and we'd go to the rodeo when I was younger and it traumatized me for life.

Chris Colfer

#59. Artists take on an alias that's suitable for their style of music. Everyone had a nickname when they were younger.

Tinie Tempah

#60. It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.

Maria Jeritza

#61. Most of all, it was the wild music that impressed Matt. It did the same thing that playing the piano had done when he was frightened and lonely. It took him into another world where only beauty existed and where he was sage from hatred and disappointment and death.

Nancy Farmer

#62. When we put music on, he kind of kicks in the belly, and it's cool to see how he's not even born yet, but he's already responding to the music. When I talk to him, he kicks as well. It's a very deep connection that I have with my son already and he's not even born. So I'm loving it.

Jencarlos Canela

#63. 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

#64. When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing ... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual ...

Laura Nyro

#65. To me, Miami is like Hell and I'm Osiris when it comes to music - I'm underrated and I came through with this rare sound. "East" means east of Miami, which is South Beach. So I'm the "Osiris of the East", I became my own god in music, and I took over South Beach.

SpaceGhostPurrp

#66. Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.

Dan Auerbach

#67. When there were financial difficulties they still managed to provide us with music and art lessons.

Jerome Isaac Friedman

#68. When you travel on a bus with guys who love all kinds of music, you get exposed to some great stuff, man.

Gregg Allman

#69. I remember when we kissed. I still feel it on my lips. The time you danced with me with no music playing. I remember the simple things. I remember till I cry. But the one thing I wish I'd forget, the memory I wanna forget is goodbye.

Miley Cyrus

#70. All these interviews I'm doing - this is the kind of stuff that I was dreaming about doing when I was younger. I was praying for people to want to write about me. I wanted people to hear my music. I wanted to perform. I wanted to be on billboards.

Shameik Moore

#71. I'm so happy. I am able to see the world just by making music, just by doing the thing that I loved doing when I was five years old.

Lenny Kravitz

#72. Usually when I'm mad, I'd rather listen to angry music than soothing music - more heavy metal, some Metallica or something.

Matt Kenseth

#73. In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

Mary Harron

#74. I was really amazed when I started hearing 'Songbird' on the radio. I couldn't believe that the record company promotion department had actually convinced radio music directors to play it -because there wasn't anything like it on the radio at the time.

Kenny G

#75. Music didn't really hit me again until the '90s, when the dancehall scene got going. The '90s were perfect for me. I would have really liked to have had The Slits out in the '90s again, to do tours and albums, because I think the '90s was a brilliant decade for music.

Ari Up

#76. Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

Lyle Lovett

#77. When you feel down or weary, play some music.

Robin S. Sharma

#78. Theater and music are both collaborative media, and I think they're best when they combine different people's visions and aesthetics.

Nick Blaemire

#79. I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

Herbie Hancock

#80. I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I moved to L.A. when I was about eleven years old. I always go back to Milwaukee whenever I can. Just chill with my grandpa and my grandmother and just be with family, be with people that were there before I got a million views on YouTube because of my music video.

Jacob Latimore

#81. When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.

Sarah Dessen

#82. I worked as a head cook at courthouses and high schools. I left it behind when I started getting into my music real heavy.

Flavor Flav

#83. Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.

Dave Brubeck

#84. I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Jason Isbell

#85. Fashion and music have always played off each other and certainly do for me; I love both so much. But there are definitely those moments when you're playing the right song at the right time in the right place, and it feels like the best job in the world.

Harley Viera-Newton

#86. The Who had a great sense of humor. And they were also very serious when it came down to making music.

Jason Reece

#87. When we stopped in front of it and turned off the engine, we heard music coming from inside - jazz. It sounded sophisticated and lonely. We

Denis Johnson

#88. I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition.

Rohinton Mistry

#89. When I do a festival, I want everyone to have a party, I think it is kind of similar to a club where everyone is there to have a good time and celebrate not being at work or just being able to have fun. I love people dancing to my music as well; if I can make them dance I feel happy.

Katy B

#90. When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music.

Jerry Lee Lewis

#91. Which even though we do have a very visual aesthetic and identity, we love it when people make their own videos to the music.

Lizzy Plapinger

#92. When it came time to hire a guitar player ... I didn't even have to think about it ... Mike Bloomfield was the best guitar player I'd ever heard ...

Bob Dylan

#93. Sometimes when we hear a song we breathe deeply and sigh. This reminds the prophet that the soul arises from heavenly harmony. In thinking about this, he was aware that the soul itself has something in itself of this music ...

Hildegard Of Bingen

#94. Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.

Johnny Cash

#95. I enjoy bluegrass, folk, gospel, and classical. I don't listen to music when I write. I sometimes listen to music just before I sit down to write.

Kent Haruf

#96. There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, 'You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.'

David Lee Roth

#97. I think a lot of artists get confused when people like their music; they think that means people know and like them. I'm sure there's an element of truth to that, but to me, the music I make is what I'm most proud of. I prefer to focus on that and for people to focus on the music, too.

Chet Faker

#98. When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this 'Mad Men Theme Song ... With a Twist' music video. I released it just as I moved to L.A.

Allison Williams

#99. I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.

Dave Brubeck

#100. I was singing doo-wop on the corner under the streetlight with four other guys when it wasn't called doo-wop. We just got together and sang, so that music is inside of me. It's a lot of stuff that has been rolling around in here and becoming this compost and has made me who I am as a singer.

Al Jarreau