20th-century Musician Quotes

High School is the penalty for transgressions yet to be specified.

You can get it if you really want,
But you must try, try and try, try and try.
You Can Get It If You Really Want (1970)
I think the most important thing for you to do in the meantime is live. It is a very involving job,
which takes much concentration and practice.

Let your inner queen's voice come through loud and clear. Be strong, be authentic, be you, and you'll do her proud.

In fact, drinking milk and eating dairy products can rob your body of calcium and contribute to osteoporosis. If you eat dark green leafy vegetables like kale, collards, and mustard greens, you can get enough calcium from a vegan diet.

As you know I have been preaching along with El Duce and Sickie Wifebeater for many years against homosexuality in rock and it's time to take revenge on people that try to stop rock. The real rock, hetero rock. There for Bowie is going on trial within Rock Kourt.

Global warming. Every day I leave my house and think, "was it this hot last year?" The heat this summer here in LA and in most of the US has been unbearable. I can't remember another time when it was 105 degrees Fahrenheit out here (40.5 Celsius), and that's the kind of weather we've been having pretty much every day.

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

Happiness is the moment when one doesn't feel pain.

Bobbejaan Schoepen

... there is no point to musical analysis at all unless it is 'two-dimensional' – unless [...] one examines the music in terms of what I call its 'Background' (and this 'Background' is the sum total of the expectations which the composer creates) and its 'Foreground' (and its 'Foreground' is what he does instead). That is to say, the composer creates certain expectations, well-defined expectations, which he proceeds to meaningfully contradict. There is therefore a strong relation between 'Background' and 'Foreground', between that which happens and that which lies at its back – or to put it the other way round, between that which the composer leads you to expect, and that which he does instead...

They say that breaking up is hard to do, now I know, I know that it's true.

I love musical theatre and my dream is to do Once On This Island.

I'm talking about me, now, for me, life is going to start when I find myself living in a proper civilized society, with no color bar, and no race riots, and that's not the worst, but in a society, where young people stand up when they feel that some injustice is done, because they don't, people don't stand up, they will not stand up, they sit back and they say "well, this is a great pity," and that's that. But that's when life is going to start for me, when I find people standing up and do something about things they feel strongly about, these appalling things.

Gerard Hoffnung

I see love, like art, as an obsession. Maybe that's an overly romantic view of human existence, but I'm an overly romantic human being. If love, like rock and roll, doesn't consume me 24-7, it's not love. It can be respect, appreciation, admiration, wonderment, it can be a world of glory and a lifetime of peace, but I can't call it love. Love burns me and confuses me. Love's a light that can't be extinguished.

I don't know him from a can of paint. I'm 15 years deep. That's how you attack a king? You attack moi? Come on, man. You got to come correct. You the laughing stock. People are like, 'You can't be serious.

Maybe I should write some songs like Mozart
'Cause many people don't believe rap is an art.

There's just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.

I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob.

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives. (Poet Paul Gerhardt) All this I cannot bear to witness any longer. Cannot the Kingdom of Salvation take me home? (Burton).

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.

I put a spell on you, because you're mine
You'd better stop the things you're doing
Ha! Haa! Haa! – What's up! – I ain't lyin'!
Yeaaaaahhhh! I can't stand it, oh no,
Your runnin' around,
I can't stand no – I can't stand you putting me down.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins

I wanna know all of your names. So at the count of three I want you all to scream your names! 1-2-3! (fans yell names) Good, now we know each other intimately. You know what that means? (fan yells Orgy!) Orgy? (laughs) No!

Now is the time to give me roses, not to keep them for my grave to come. Give them to me while my heart beats, give them today while my heart yearns for jubilee. Now is the time.

Can the circle be unbroken Bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye There's a better home a-waiting In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

All the other stuff - the socialising and drinking and stuff that people say are important parts of university because it teaches you social skills - is fucking nonsense, because you learn that at infant school or comprehensive. Or at least, you're meant to. I think if I'd been able to have a flat of my own it would have been very different because I've never been very good with very many different people. I've always surrounded myself with just a very few people. To hole myself up in a tower block with hundreds of people I had nothing in common with was a really bad experience.

Richey James Edwards

I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous. I had the kind of a dream that maybe they're still trying to teach in school. Of the America that made America famous...and Of the people who just might understand That how together yes we can Create a country better than The one we have made of this land, We have a choice to make each man who dares to dream, reaching out his hand A prophet or just a crazy God damn Dreamer of a fool