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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"I think that selling rights is a bad move commercially, not just morally. It cheapens the songs. When people come to my concerts, they often hold up candles when we do "Let It Be." I don't think they'd do that anymore if the song suddenly became part of an Oldsmobile ad."
"Help them to learn songs of joy, instead of burn, baby, burn."
"I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record."
"I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... ."
"Love Me Do, the first song we recorded, John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead because they wanted John to play harmonica."
"I'm not into, Hey, what's your sign? or any of that. But I don't know how I got here, and I don't know how I write songs. I don't know why I breathe."
"Every love song I write is for Linda."
"John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood."
"Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human."
"I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need."
"I like to do cover songs if I really love them, I have to love the song first."
"When the songs of your heart start singing, you should listen...for its harmony will bring you happiness and the melody is the voice of your true spirit."
"I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused."
"Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."
"Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
"Rough wind, the moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, Wail, for the world's wrong!"
"An image, a dance step, a song may function from time to time as entertainment, but the root and full practice of the arts lies in the recognition that art is power, an instrument of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred."
"I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there."
"You want to have a song that people will listen to and go, 'Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something in my life,' or, 'something I'm currently going through,' or maybe something happens later and you hear the song and go, 'Wow! That really was telling a story that I can relate to now.' That's my hope."
"Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, you don't need to be coy, Roy, just get yourself free. Hop on the bus, Gus, you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free."
