Musician famous quotes

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach...
-- Aaron Copland

#Names #Musician #Flaws

I like having my hair and face done, but I'm not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.
-- Adele

#Self Esteem #Hair #Musician

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his lifes work.
-- Ahmet Ertegun

#Brother #People #Musician

I always want to set myself a challenge by doing something no-one would expect me to do! But, having said that, I don't feel as a musician you can steer too far away from what you normally do.
-- Akon

#Challenges #Musician #Want

I have always made commercial music. The people who vote for the Grammy nominees are mostly in their 40s and have other jobs or are musicians themselves. They like music that they can relate to - they like commercial music.
-- Al Walser

#Jobs #People #Musician

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.
-- Alan Greenspan

#Average #Musician #Band

Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.
-- Albert Schweitzer

#Men #Musician #Doe

The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me.
-- Alberta Hunter

#Play #Musician #Want

One day, a musician asked me what I did. When I told him I was to be a businessman, he laughed and said, You are not a businessman. Sometimes all it takes is one person to put an important thought in your head, and he did.
-- Alexander Hanson

#Important #One Day #Musician

I'm a compulsive musician, but it's also a bloody good way out of having to do anything else.
-- Alexis Korner

#Musician #Way #Bloody

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.
-- Alexis Korner

#Musical #Musician #Movement

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Musician #Poet #Possession

I personally feel that acting is not totally different from singing and being a musician.
-- Alicia Keys

#Singing #Acting #Musician

The best musicians answer something in you when you don't even know the question.
-- Allison Pearson

#Musician #Answers

I want to live in a world where Miley (or any female musician) can twerk wildly at 20, wear a full-cover floral hippie mumu at 37, show up at 47 in see-through latex, and pose semi-naked, like Keith & co, on the cover of Rolling Stone at 57 and be APPLAUDED for being so comfortable with her body.
-- Amanda Palmer

#Hippie #Musician #Rolling

One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.
-- Amanda Palmer

#Artist #Faces #Musician

I know my own weaknesses as a human being, and as a musician, as a singer and as a woman.
-- Amy Grant

#Weakness #Musician #Singers

Cause I'm a musician, I'm not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.
-- Amy Winehouse

#Musician #Causes #Posing

To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.
-- Andre Benjamin

#Thinking #Important #Musician

Just as a musician loves music and not nightingales, and a poet loves poetry and not sunsets, a painter is not primarily a person who responds to figures and landscapes. He is primarily one who loves pictures.
-- Andre Malraux

#Love Picture #Sunset #Musician

When you find a waiter who is a waiter and not an actor, writer, musician or poet, you've found a jewel.
-- Andre Soltner

#Jewels #Musician #Actors

When one puts up a building one makes an elaborate scaffold to get everything into its proper place. But when one takes the scaffold down, the building must stand by itself with no trace of the means by which it was erected. That is how a musician should work.
-- Andres Segovia

#Mean #Musician #Building

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.
-- Andrew Bird

#Fun #Musician #Done

It was clear from the beginning that I was going to be a musician.
-- Andrew Gold

#Musician #Clear

As a musician, you just want to be able to do what you love.
-- Andy Grammer

#Musician #Want #Able

To be a good musician, you need to give people what they want, what they need.
-- Andy Grammer

#People #Giving #Musician

Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.
-- Andy Richter

#People #Brain #Musician

"What can I offer you that will make you happier about how you should feel about who Angelina Jolie is?" I think that's a very strange desire to know those things. And yet I have it, with musicians in particular. I'm desperate to know what Micah P. Hinson is like or Julian Casablancas. Philip Seymour Hoffman made me feel like that.
-- Angelina Jolie

#Thinking #Desire #Musician

You know, I always say musicians, they can do it on their own. They can practice their violin on their own. A painter can paint by himself. A writer can write by himself. But an actor needs a group, and the hardest thing about expanding your ability and your craft is to have a group to do it with that is of a caliber where you can grow even more.
-- Anne Archer

#Writing #Practice #Musician

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.
-- Anthony Braxton

#Play #African American #Musician

I try not to become friends with musicians, but life happens and dinner happens and going out happens - it becomes interwoven in L.A.
-- Ariel Rechtshaid

#Trying #Musician #Going Out

If John Lennon is deported, I'm leaving too...with my musicians..and my marijuana.
-- Art Garfunkel

#Marijuana #Leaving #Musician

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.
-- Artie Shaw

#Swings #Nouns #Musician

My family isn't posh; they're musicians.
-- Audrey Niffenegger

#Musician #My Family #Posh

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Watch any good musician and you'll see what I mean.
-- Austin Kleon

#Art #Mean #Musician

Music proposes. Sound disposes.
-- Babette Deutsch

#Music #Musician #Sound

I am a musician. My passion for music has obliterated everything in its path for my entire life.
-- Barry Manilow

#Passion #Path #Musician

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.
-- Beck

#Starting Over #Over You #Musician

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.
-- Benny Goodman

#Winning #Musician #Want

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.
-- Beth Ditto

#Gossip #Musician #Band

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.
-- Beth Orton

#Beautiful #Working Together #Musician

A musician can get lost to what he is in the session busines as it was.
-- Big Jim Sullivan

#Musician #Lost

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.
-- Bill Bruford

#Writing #Two #Musician

Whatever I do, I attempt to do it fully. I try, and don't always succeed, to be thorough. There are musicians who do not know their worth, and if they knew it at one time, it has eluded them. I know my worth. You try not to dwell in the past.
-- Bill Dixon

#Past #Trying #Musician

The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed. If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won't succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.
-- Bill Dixon

#Player #Magic #Musician

Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.
-- Bill Dixon

#Rocks #Musician #Levels

I love listening to other musicians and seeing what they do to gain their distinctive respective sounds and edge.
-- Bill Frisell

#Listening #Musician #Sound

There are things that I am very proud of and there are things that you are not so proud of. But I think that applies to any musician.
-- Bill Wyman

#Thinking #Musician #Proud

The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.
-- Billy Corgan

#People #Musician #Want

If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music.
-- Billy Eckstine

#College #Doctors #Musician

Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.
-- Billy Joel

#Heart #Voice #Musician

Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm - walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.
-- Billy Joel

#Safety #Wire #Musician

Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so.
-- Billy Joel

#Thinking #Musician #Irs

Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.
-- Billy Joel

#Musician

Why do musicians give so much time to charitable causes? The most humanitarian cause that we can give our time to is the creation and performance of music itself.
-- Billy Joel

#Giving #Musician #Causes

It's really hard to make a living as a musician. It's almost impossible.
-- Billy Joel

#Musician #Impossible

A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.
-- Billy Joel

#Golf #Musician #Typical

I didn't follow the standard rules of bass playing, and many musicians on many different instruments who became noteworthy for their unique or particular style did a very similar thing.
-- Billy Sheehan

#Unique #Style #Musician

You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.
-- Billy Sherwood

#Ideas #Musician #Labels

Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.
-- Bjork

#House #Musical #Musician

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.
-- Black Francis

#Musician #Records #Want

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.
-- Black Francis

#Age #Musician #Records

You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.
-- Black Francis

#Editors #Musician #Stuff

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.
-- Black Francis

#People #Style #Musician

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
-- Bob Dylan

#Musician #Firsts #Poet

The music business will be revitalized by musicians, not the labels or Live Nation. When the musicians decide to put music first, instead of money, the public will flock to the fruits and the scene will be healthy again.
-- Bob Lefsetz

#Healthy #Musician #Labels

I love working with different musicians in the studio, that's a real joy working with someone for the first time.
-- Bob Seger

#Real #Joy #Musician

Musicians are the architects of heaven.
-- Bobby McFerrin

#Heaven #Musician #Architect

I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.
-- Bobby McFerrin

#Musician #Wonderful #Grew Up

I'd have no trouble being the barbecue kingpin of America. I'd just add it to all the other things I am: jazz musician, carpenter, architect, engineer and revolutionary.
-- Bobby Seale

#America #Musician #Add

I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.
-- Bonnie Raitt

#Play #People #Musician

We were brash young fellows. I was always hanging with the older crowd anyway. The musicians were the Hip Cats, and I was hanging with them anyway. I Just started out real early.
-- Bootsy Collins

#Real #Cat #Musician

I wanted to get my recording and become a musician again, work; with other people, do that kind of thing because I kind of got away from that for a while once we started happening, you know, selling records, sold out concerts.
-- Bootsy Collins

#People #Musician #Boots

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard
-- Brad Paisley

#Song #Ideas #Musician

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
-- Branford Marsalis

#Song #People #Musician

A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.
-- Branford Marsalis

#Tough Times #Musician #Hearing

One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
-- Branford Marsalis

#Successful #Community #Musician

I still don't understand the music industry that much. Everything I learned was from hanging out with rock musicians in studios. I certainly have respect for those who make music their livelihood.
-- Brendan Fraser

#Rocks #Musician #Rock Music

Don't be ashamed of your own ideas. Most musicians get applauded for sounding like someone else.
-- Brian Eno

#Ideas #Musician #Ashamed

Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.
-- Brian Eno

#Musician #Pops #Seriousness

I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.
-- Brian Eno

#Musician #Territory #Best Work

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level
-- Brian Greene

#Kids #Civilization #Musician

I'm a much better musician than astronomer. I think the world got the right choice.
-- Brian May

#Thinking #Choices #Musician

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.
-- Bruno Mars

#Brother #Play #Musician

I signed up to be a musician, I want to perform, I want to sing.
-- Bruno Mars

#Musician #Want

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre; nowadays, it's so much harder than it ever was.
-- Bryan Adams

#Pay #Matter #Musician

Both of my parents were musicians.
-- Bryan White

#Parent #Musician

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author.
-- Bryce Courtenay

#Jobs #Musician #Different

A great musician is just a thief who doesn't get caught
-- Buddy Rich

#Musician #Thieves #Great Music

This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we--even our poets and musicians and inventors--never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their Creator
-- C. S. Lewis

#Men #Musician #Poet

A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour will stimulate a like humour in the listener.
-- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

#Moving #Musician #Revealing

A musician cannot move others unless he, too, is moved.
-- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

#Moving #Musical #Musician

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
-- Carlos Santana

#Musician #Jazz #Shows

KISS is Las Vegas entertainment. A musician doesn't need the mask.
-- Carlos Santana

#Kissing #Vegas #Musician

Our parents were musicians.
-- Caroline Corr

#Pregnancy #Parent #Musician

musicians rarely have a sense of humour, at least, about themselves.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Humor #Musician #Humour

Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.
-- Cassandra Wilson

#Song #Musician #Way

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.
-- Cecilia Bartoli

#Musician #Berlin #September

The ability for a woman to orally satisfy somebody in a rock band, that's important to a rock 'n' roll musician.
-- Chad Kroeger

#Rocks #Important #Musician

Edible names are what drives me as a musician. My next band will be called the Hot Dogs.
-- Chad Smith

#Dog #Names #Musician