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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"Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything."
"I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?"
"The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again."
"Bollywood has got this rare quality where it dances, but it still has a depth of a sad song at the same time. It's really strange. They kind of manage to do two things at once. We do a ballad, or a dance song, and it's very difficult. They kind of mix those two things together. It's pretty impressive, beautiful music."
"I'm still looking to write a great song.... You always are. You know, you never think, 'Well, that's enough ... that's good enough.'"
"Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss."
"I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me."
"Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs"
"As a kid, I always had a super vivid imagination, like "Man, I like those shoes, but they should've made them in purple" or like, "Man, I wonder how people make songs.""
"O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty."
"Unless you can feel when the song is done No other is sweet in its rhythm; Unless you can feel when left by one That all men else go with him."
"Man, I was tame compared to what they do now. Are you kidding? I didn't do anything but just jiggle."
"Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head. Things I shouldn't be thinking about. Not to be gimmicky, but people should be able to determine when I'm serious and when I'm f... around. That's why a lot of my songs are funny. I got a warped sense of humor I guess."
"It was a slow process. You gotta remember I hadn't recorded a song sober in seven years. So it took me awhile to even feel like I could record a song sober."
"I walked out and Jack Nicholson was sitting about six feet away, so I avoided that area and I looked up at the balcony in the back and sang the song."
"I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel."
"The moments when I first made something, like when I first wrote a song please me so intensely. Everything else after that is just the act of communication."
"There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle."
"I hope to die right in the middle of a song and right on the stage doing what I love to do. I hope to be about 120 when that happens."
"If I had to give up performing, it wouldn't bother me too much. But I couldn't live without my writing. I put all my feelings, my very soul, into my writing. I tell the world in my songs things I wouldn't even tell my husband."
