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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"Right around my first year of college - I remember "Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison, just moved me tremendously. The power of language and how it can peel back truths, bring things to the surface. So I learned a lot from fiction."
"Putting two songs together, I've always loved that trick when it works."
"I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, We really love this song."
"I wanted to be a cheerleader, like my sister was - all the most popular and beautiful girls are cheerleaders and I wanted that, and it demolished this vision of myself. That's when I found the piano, when music saved me; that's when I first attempted to write my own songs."
"If God is Mother, then we need only gather together with people and adore her through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, ritual involving dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers, and beauty."
"Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is."
"The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow."
"I've written this song called 'Insania' - it's a mix of Insane and Mania, and even though it's a made up word you instantly know what it means!"
"My goal in this music business is to be here as long as I'm alive. I want my music to be here. I want to be the Michael Jackson and the Prince of hip-hop. I want to be a legend. I want to change the world. I want to give them songs that mean something."
"I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song."
"In the clearing stands the boxer, and a fighter by his trade. And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down... or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame "I am leaving! I am leaving" but the fighter still remains."
"The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it."
"When I began making my own albums, the songs became funkier. They were more about the streets."
"I try and absorb all the things that I respect in the artist's I've worked with.When we work with someone on, Live From Daryl's House, we really get inside their music which gives me an even broader idea of the writing process. I think I'm always learning from everything in life. There are really songs everywhere."
"I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were."
"When I first saw you with your smile so tender, my heart was captured, my soul surrendered."
"What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it. And I ask you to join me in this same song."
"You know, YOUR President, the one with the big ears-he ain't my President - had that woman singing for him at his Inauguration. She's going to get her [expletive] whooped. How dare Beyonce sing MY song that I been singing forever. Now I'm going to sing it for y'all."
"Certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is"
"So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song."
