Song quotes
10.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside song — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Everybody has their own way of hearing songs. My fans are usually pretty on point. Sometimes they go all the way to the bottom of it. It's fascinating to me how far an idea can go. I wrote most of my first album in my mom's kitchen, and now I can go around the world and hear people recite those lyrics, and understand the story, even though they're not from the same area I grew up in."
"Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now."
"The Gulf Stream waters of Woody Guthrie's famous song were strung with columns of oil that were several miles long."
"Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn."
"If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you."
"Come ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of Harvest-home!"
"The Fun Girl video which was directed by Bijoux Altamarino really came out of her vision. I feel she understood the mystery, danger and power of the song and It really came through in the end."
"I feel very strongly about letting people know I'm proud of who I am. I want people to know when they hear my songs it's coming from a specific place. The new record is specifically for us trans women: that we can sing about our pain, being ostracized by our lovers, who are ashamed of us in a way. There's no pop music like that for our community. I wanted to contribute in that way."
"The word C.R.E.A.M. - which stands for "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" - is from Wu Tang Clan. This song is about a prostitute who falls in love with her client, who winds up being a drug girl in New York. It's an ode to the girl who works in the streets; it gives her a face and a name and a story. I used to go and admire those girls. I was inspired by their bravery and their femininity, and how they were just putting themselves out there. It was intense to see. It's strange, but they kind of inspired me in a way. I felt it was so bold."
"I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal."
"I recall this passage as the hour of its first fully coming over me that she was a beautiful liberal creature. I had seen her personality in glimpses and gleams, like a song sung in snatches, but now it was before me in a large rosy glow, as if it had been a full volume of sound. I heard the whole of the air, and it was sweet fresh music, which I was often to hum over.(Sir Edmund Orme)"
"The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing."
"I don't create the movies I'm in. When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song."
"I wanted to perform, I wanted to write songs, and I wanted to get lots of chicks."
"A song is what you fall in love with first, but then I think a band's ideals and a band's sense of fashion and a sense of how they treat people is what you fall in love with afterwards."
"I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come."
"I'm always making music. I'm constantly making little musical recordings on my phone or on a little voice recorder I carry with me so I can remember these little pieces of music that eventually becomes songs."
"It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is."
"Bands have always written songs against what they see as wrong. Ronald Reagan really made for a lot of songs."
"One of the nice things about a favorite pop song is that it's an unconditional truce on judgment and musical snobbery. You like the song because you just do, and there need not be any further criticism."
