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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"As part of Depeche Mode, I don't think it's right for me to be using my own songs for a solo project. I'm not a very prolific songwriter, so I keep those for Depeche Mode."
"Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song."
"I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense."
"When I write, I'm writing as a fan, and trying to come up with songs that I would want to listen to."
"I've noticed that most authors who are pastors or speakers write books whose message is derived from a sermon series they did at their church. I guess my process is similar except that instead of a sermon, the genesis of the idea is found in the form of a three-minute song. And many of my songs have been inspired by the true stories and testimonies of people who've written to me from all over the world."
"When I saw how much the message of the song resonated with people I began to realize we're all on the same journey of discovering who we are. Why else would the bookstores be filled with self-help books? That's why I wanted to write Hello My Name Is; as a powerful reminder that when it comes to getting to the core of who we are, we simply can't help ourselves. Left to our own devices, we'll wander down a wide road filled with people slapping false identities on us at every turn. I've walked that road, and I don't want to anymore."
"I already committed Darren [Criss] to giving a song."
"One song bled into another and they remained locked together, neither willing to break the intimacy that surrounded them, concealing them in the small space the two occupied."
"My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing."
"By love I don't mean indulgence. I do not mean sentimentality. And in this instance, I don't even mean romance. I mean that condition that allowed humans to dream of God.That condition that allowed the "dumb" to write spirituals and Russian songs and Irish lilts. That is love, and it's so much larger than anything I can conceive."
"I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything."
"Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry."
"If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world?"
"I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships."
"I found it unbearable when I allow the song to meet the music, to allow the story to meet the music."
"But for me, it [singing] was a way to get out the feeling of the song, and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing."
"I remember we were out on the road when the album finally came out in February 1973. I listened to it in my hotel room and just got this really big smile. I was thinking, 'It's amazing, we're really pulling this off'. The album was very, very unique and very, very different. I was really proud of the songs, especially 'No More Mr Nice Guy', 'Billion Dollar Babies' and 'Generation Landslide'."
"When you write a show, you just never know if it will have a future or if the show will end up ever having a production, but, that doesn't mean that the songs - the best of the best songs - can't be pulled out and put on a CD. And, if the shows that they come from end up happening, then people will regard this as like a quirky little concept recording. And, if the shows don't end up happening, at least the songs will live on in some capacity."
"I'm not here to write a song for you, I'm here to help you write a song for yourself."
"I can write hundreds of songs on simple power chords."
