Musical quotes
1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside musical — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Thai food ain't about simplicity. It's about the juggling of disparate elements to create a harmonious finish. Like a complex musical chord it's got to have a smooth surface but it doesn't matter what's happening underneath. Simplicity isn't the dictum here, at all. Some westerners think it's a jumble of flavours, but to a Thai that's important, it's the complexity they delight in."
"Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has found his niche in making the sound of solitude a triumphant experience, like Good Will Hunting: The Musical."
"I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can."
"I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
"The amount of money one needs is terrifying."
"Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it."
"I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music."
"To me, the camera is like a musical instrument. You use it to control the flow, shape, size and colors of images."
"Mariah Carey is kinda scary."
"Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age."
"With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years."
"And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started."
"I realized I was not a great musical technician, if I was going to make anything interesting it would have to come from the creative side of me and not the craft side of me."
"Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside."
"The Blind Boys are truly the deepest well of American musical heritage you can discover."
"Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth.""
"Staying enthused about finding things; discovering new beauty in the world that can translate into music. That's the most precious sort of resource. You have to pull stuff from outside of the musical realm. Whatever muscle it is that it takes to listen to music and stay focused, in me, is really strong."
"We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds."
"We forget to thank the scientists that began these musical inventions and systems. The guy that invented the phonograph and gramophone - Thomas Edison!"
"One element of Madonna's career that really takes center stage is how many times she's reinvented herself. It's easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It's inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable."
