Quotes on Music

It's very hard to grow up in the African American church and for music to not be in your veins. It's just part of the fabric of who we are as people, especially black musicians.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

Because of the Thames I have always loved inland waterways - water in general, water sounds - there's music in water. Brooks babbling, fountains splashing. Weirs, waterfalls; tumbling, gushing.

I grew up in what you might call a relentlessly creative household. We were given art supplies, music supplies... Our mother knew enough to get us started and then stand back and not meddle. My parents never said to us, 'Don't you think you'll need something to fall back on?' They acted as though creativity was completely normal.

When we decided to go to Cuba to perform, we did it because we just wanted to build a bridge, you know, between Cuba and the rest of the community. And we just wanted to prove that music and art need to be over all ideology or way to think life, and we just wanted to go in there and play just because of love.

Everyone who gave me food, who took away my hunger, inspired me to compose. They told me their stories, and I had no other way to console them than with a piece of music, and that is how I learned. I did not resolve their problems with my songs, but I created a moment of release.

I don't make a particular distinction between 'high art' and 'low art.' Music is there for everybody. It's a river we can all put our cups into and drink it and be sustained by it.

By wrecking something, it's always reinventing. All modern movements in art and music wrecked what came before, in a way - and surprised the cooler generation that was one step ahead. That's how you get ahead.

I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.

Music is my way of taking my mind away from the game. When I'm singing, you don't got anything to worry about. Don't gotta worry about scoring however many points or winning the game. No matter how good or how bad you are, it's fun.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before.

It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.

I feel blessed and humbled that people have loved my music. Nothing would be possible without their acceptance.

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.

Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.

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

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.