Musician quotes
1.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside musician — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"It can be difficult to mediate a compromise between what I have in my head and what the musician has in mind, which is often 180° different when it comes to the finished product, so it requires that element of trust from somewhere. The point I make to them is "You've seen what I do, so just trust me and we will come up with something exciting.""
"First of all I think that is true, if you are a musician, particularly on the comeback that you do have to end up in one of these musical centers somewhere to be viable, salable and so on."
"My father was a classical musician and my mother was a writer."
"I think that my past stands me in good stead in that it does have a certain strength for musicians."
"I had abandoned my plans for priesthood and replaced them with dreams of being a musician."
"There used to be a club in new york called Bradley's - I've never been there, it closed in the 80's - but I used to study with Junior Mance, and he would tell me about Bradley's. It was a very important place for a generation of jazz musicians in New York. It was really all about pianists there."
"I go by the "Miles Davis school of production and band-leading", where you pick the best musicians you can, you provide them with a minimum of direction, and you just let the music happen. I've seen it work time and time again."
"When you have the opportunity to make music with great musicians, take it. That's it. That's the only reason I need, really."
"I wouldn't even begin to presume that the talent of an able actor is anything like the talents of a prodigious musician."
"All the musicians that I know want to act."
"Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms."
"I still have a fantasy of being a musician when I grow up."
"'SNL' is probably one of the premiere outlets that a musician can perform on that isn't obviously a music outlet."
"It's important for all worship musicians to pour into young people."
"Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do."
"[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know."
"If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body."
"When I'm doing interviews, I'm doing interviews, and when I am writing, I'm writing. I sit there with a musician and I write. It's the same process since I started writing in my twenties. I like to come in and leave with a finished song."
"When I worked with General Electric, again this was soon after the Second World War, you know, I was keeping up with new developments and they showed me a milling machine and this thing worked by punch cards - that's where computers were at that time, and everybody was sort of sheepish about how well this thing worked because in those days machinists were treated as though they were great musicians because they were virtuosos on these machines."
