20th-century Musician Quotes

Paul McCartney

David Bowie

George Harrison

Ringo Starr

Bruce Willis

Miles Davis

Kurt Cobain

Help them to learn songs of joy, instead of burn, baby, burn.

As a political independent, I would gladly vote for any political party dedicated to limited government and entrepreneurship.

Arthur C. Brooks

It's a bit like being a mad scientist. You mix a bit of this with some of that. You're never sure what's going to happen. But I'd rather blow up the laboratory than keep reinventing the wheel.

I may make you feel but I can't make you think
Your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink.

All of nature talks to me - if I could just figure out what it's saying - trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They're all talking. They're talking to me.

Laurie Anderson

I don't get it... did we look like transvestites or something?

Benny Andersson

I was just sixteen and Visconti and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish. I knew I couldn't react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.

Björn Andrésen

I fell in love with you first time I looked into
Them there eyes.
You've got a certain li'l cute way of flirtin' with
Them there eyes.

Now, I'm Sick, Sober and Sorry
Broke, disgusted and sad
Sick, Sober and Sorry
But look at the fun that I had.

A century and a half after its birth, the modern business corporation, an artificial person made in the image of a human psychopath, now is seeking to remake real people in its image.

If you've lost your faith in love and music, oh, the end won't be long.

Still I only feel alive when the view is flashing, alarms going off in my head...
I want to grab you and just kiss you; maybe I should sit down. No sense in cashing us now.
Yeah, I only feel alright when the view is flashing, bombs going off in my head...
I want to grab you, want to scream at you, no icing me down. The party's crashing us now. The party's crashing us now.

And what exactly is a dream, and what exactly is a joke?

It's the way you play that makes it. What I say is, for Christ's sake, you don't have to kill yourself to sing. Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.

But people like to say, Oh, it's in the blood. But art comes from nowhere. It comes from a vague, scary place. It's scary because you don't know when it's coming or if it will ever come again. It's this Other.

A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?

Captain Beefheart

I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.

Prokofiev's creative path traversed many countries and was affected by wars and revolutions. Life brought him into contact with some of the most prominent and influential artistic figures of his time. Observing the magnificent panorama of Prokofiev's oeuvre, one sees that the composer's musical style evolved significantly over the course of his creative life. The reasons for the changes of direction have been much discussed and debated.

And I realized that the only purpose to revolution is to be able to love who you want, how you want, when you want and where you want...

Hype. What a marvellous, misused word. If you hype something and it succeeds, you're a genius, it wasn't hype; if you hype it and it fails, then it's just a hype.

I will try to keep my homily brief. But be warned — I'm Irish.

I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.

I am not who I would like to be, It's just who I am right now.

I'm celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo

We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about. And they're still the biggest band in the world, so we failed. We didn't really do anything, people wore flares for a year or two, d'you know what I mean? That's all we did.