Quotes on Music

The music was thunder and joy. Lightning bolts of happiness and praise, foot-stomping, dance-shouting, good-feeling singing from the soul.

Music is a means of rapid transportation.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

Music is the healing force of the universe.

No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

What I like best about music is when time goes away.

Sometimes the break in your heart is like the hole in the flute. Sometimes it’s the place where the music comes through.

Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

The image is one thing and the human being is another...it's very hard to live up to an image.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

...That is one of the main causes of this arrogance: the idea of power. Then you lose your true power which is to be part of all, and the only way you can be part of all is to understand it. And when you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and say, 'I know what you're going to teach me'.

If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.