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

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.

In the 1960s, the record companies seemed to sign anything with long hair; if it was a sheepdog, so what.

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.

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...

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.

I don't sing my mother tongue
No, this is not a love song

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.

Eugene Chadbourne

I should know who I am by now.
I walk the record stands somehow.
Thinking of winter.
Your name is the splinter inside me.
While I wait.

I love, I love, I love, killer whales, and I love mangos, and Iggy Pop too, I love Iggy Pop, and eating, getting up in the morning, and going swimming, and taking a good shit, and I love all of you too! I love John Frusciante who's back in the band. Who loved Dave Navarro?(boos)That's what I thought!

A fat pink cloud hangs over the hill Unfolding like a rose. If you hold my hand and sit real still You can hear the grass as it grows.

John La Touche (lyricist)

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

Captain Beefheart

Where I come from we say that rhythm is the soul of life, because the whole universe revolves around rhythm, and when we get out of rhythm, that's when we get into trouble.

Babatunde Olatunji

He had been someone before. That person had been the result of a lifetime of choices, good and bad. And like it or not, he was drawing closer to that identity now. Not the freedom of infinite variety, but the tyranny of a decision made, a path walked, a life lived. What if he didn't like the view

For your information, I am NOT overreacting. I'm REACTING. That's different. It's important to react when you're pissed off.

Yes, confidence was knowing I could do anything. But, I realized, confidence must always be rooted in work. In sweat. In pain-good pain. And in honesty.

You have to sniff out joy, keep your nose to the joy-trail.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

I was lucky enough to write songs that carry a good beat and tell a real story that people could feel was their story, too — something that old people or the kids could both enjoy.

Antoine Fats Domino, Jr.

Music is a Place to take Refuge. It's a Sanctuary from Mediocrity and Boredom. It's Innocent and it's a Place you can loose yourself in Thoughts, Memories and Intricacies..

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun.

Robert MacArthur Crawford

The most self-destructive thought that any person can have is thinking that he or she is not in total control of his or her life. That's when, 'Why me?' becomes a theme song.

We are stronger than we think we are.
We have courage that we do not recognize until we need it.
We are equal to challenges that we haven't even imagined yet

We skipped the light fandango
And turned cartwheels cross the floor …
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale …
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast …

We used to play in places so tough that you had to show your gun and puke twice before they'd let you in the door.