"We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
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Song quotes
Song
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Song quotes (page 15 of 536)
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". . . everything in life responds to the song of the heart."
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"I’ve learned to live with rage. In some ways, it’s my rage that keeps me going. Without it, I would have been whipped long ago. With it, I got a lot more songs to sing."
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"An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me.""
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"I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it."
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"Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it's a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan."
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"Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers."
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"I ain't here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I'm just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that's the way yall need Jesus."
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"True love opens the gates of time."
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"['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought."
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"Every one of my father's songs is a lesson."
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"That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out."
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"I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don't think is quite the same as singing it."
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"But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination."
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"There's an opera out on the turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley."
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"I am not cute. I am the dreaded Grim Reaper. People fear me, you know. There's a whole song about it."
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"Let the bird sing without deciphering the song."
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"The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is."
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"Got a light skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson, Got a dark skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson."
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"We walked at night towards a cafe blooming with Japanese lanterns and I followed your white shoes gleaming like radium in the damp darkness. Rising off the water, lights flickered an invitation far enough away to be interpreted as we liked; to shimmer glamourously behind the silhouette of retrospective good times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs."
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