Piano
At 66 Sandringham Crescent
an upright piano was being eased down
a long flight of stairs by three men
all wearing off-white overalls.
Backward, staccato, two stepped
descending
one
stair
at
a
time
till the taller of the two men
began to collapse in slow
slow slow motion
and the piano
leapt
to the hallway's rising floor
crashing its memories of music:
simple tunes such as 3 Blind Mice,
as well as great meaningful sonatas
of profundity and faraway,
into a scattered anarchic jigsaw
of free-loving volatile
meaningless sounds
fading
till the stricken piano
lost its memory entirely.
After the ambulance arrived (too late)
one removal man lit a cigarette
and sensing the wide-awake stare
of the householder
tapped the grey ash, with great delicacy,
into the cupped hollow of his left hand.
Running Late
Dannie Abse
I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent
musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Bob Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.
Douglas Adams
In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song.
Franklin P. Adams
There was no giving up. Trying and trying. That's what I'm all about.
Sonita Alizadeh
Never sing in chorus, if you want to be heard.
J. F. Archibald
I swear they're real!
Victoria Beckham
Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you.
Johannes Brahms
Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I'm not giving up my day job or trying to get
anyone else's job. I just can't think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer!
Garth Brooks
My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was
serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.
Kate Bush
Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.
David Byrne
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
George Byron
We are all musicians, and we're not really good musicians. But we have this gracious gift that has been
bestowed on us, and we don't want to disappoint. So I guess our biggest fear would be, just giving up.
Justin Chancellor
Of all the modern phenomena, the most monstrous and ominous, the most manifestly rotting with disease, the most grimly prophetic of destruction,
the most clearly and unmistakably inspired by evil spirits, the most instantly and awfully overshadowed by the wrath of heaven, the most near to madness
and moral chaos, the most vivid with devilry and despair, is the practice of having to listen to loud music while eating a meal in a restaurant.
G. K. Chesterton
The earth is suffocating ... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.
Frédéric Chopin
Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
William Congreve
Broken glass. It's just like glitter, isn't it?
Pete Doherty
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Bob Dylan
A lot of people can't stand touring but to me it's like breathing. I do it because I'm driven to do it.
Bob Dylan
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.
Bob Dylan
A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.
Bob Dylan
A song is anything that can walk by itself.
Bob Dylan
All I can do is be me, whoever that is.
Bob Dylan
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.
Bob Dylan
All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
Bob Dylan
At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.
Bob Dylan
Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.
Bob Dylan
Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.
Bob Dylan
Being on tour is like being in limbo. It's like going from nowhere to nowhere.
Bob Dylan
But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.
Bob Dylan
Chaos is a friend of mine.
Bob Dylan
Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.
Bob Dylan
Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.
Bob Dylan
Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people.
Bob Dylan
He not busy being born is busy dying.
Bob Dylan
I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.
Bob Dylan
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural.
I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
Bob Dylan
I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
Bob Dylan
I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.
Bob Dylan
I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both
just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.
Bob Dylan
I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings. And I've never been too impressed.
Bob Dylan
I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
Bob Dylan
I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.
Bob Dylan
I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.
Bob Dylan
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Bob Dylan
I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.
Bob Dylan
I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon.
Bob Dylan
I'm speaking for all of us. I'm the spokesman for a generation.
Bob Dylan
I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.
Bob Dylan
If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.
Bob Dylan
In ceremonies of the horsemen, even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Bob Dylan
In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.
Bob Dylan
Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.
Bob Dylan
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
Bob Dylan
No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.
Bob Dylan
People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.
Bob Dylan
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.
Bob Dylan
Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.
Bob Dylan
The radio makes hideous sounds.
Bob Dylan
There is nothing so stable as change.
Bob Dylan
This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.
Bob Dylan
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
Bob Dylan
Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.
Bob Dylan
What good are fans? You can't eat applause for breakfast. You can't sleep with it.
Bob Dylan
What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?
Bob Dylan
Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.
Bob Dylan
You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.
Bob Dylan
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since
for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless
brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to
shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
Albert Einstein
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
George Eliot
I ain't giving up on myself, so if you give up on me, I ain't got nothing else to say for you.
Future
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
Ed Gardner
Globalization means we have to re-examine some of our ideas, and look at ideas from other countries,
from other cultures, and open ourselves to them. And that's not comfortable for the average person.
Herbie Hancock
All I'm gonna do is just go on and do what I feel.
Jimi Hendrix
All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.
Jimi Hendrix
Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
Jimi Hendrix
Even Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.
Jimi Hendrix
Every city in the world always has a gang, a street gang, or the so-called outcasts.
Jimi Hendrix
Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
Jimi Hendrix
I don't have nothing to regret at all in the past, except that I might've unintentionally hurt somebody else or something.
Jimi Hendrix
I got a pet monkey called Charlie Chan.
Jimi Hendrix
I have this one little saying, when things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.
Jimi Hendrix
I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or
either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around.
Jimi Hendrix
I try to use my music to move these people to act.
Jimi Hendrix
I used to live in a room full of mirrors; all I could see was me. I take my spirit and I crash my mirrors, now the whole world is here for me to see.
Jimi Hendrix
I was trying to do too many things at the same time, which is my nature. But I was enjoying it, and I still do enjoy it.
Jimi Hendrix
I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out.
Jimi Hendrix
I'm gonna put a curse on you and all your kids will be born completely naked.
Jimi Hendrix
I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to.
Jimi Hendrix
I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.
Jimi Hendrix
If I'm free, it's because I'm always running.
Jimi Hendrix
If it was up to me, there wouldn't be no such thing as the establishment.
Jimi Hendrix
Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.
Jimi Hendrix
In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.
Jimi Hendrix
It all has to come from inside, though, I guess.
Jimi Hendrix
It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead your made for life.
Jimi Hendrix
It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life.
Jimi Hendrix
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
Jimi Hendrix
Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.
Jimi Hendrix
Music is a safe kind of high.
Jimi Hendrix
Music is my religion.
Jimi Hendrix
Music makes me high on stage, and that's the truth. It's like being almost addicted to music.
Jimi Hendrix
My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.
Jimi Hendrix
My nature just changes.
Jimi Hendrix
Rock is so much fun. That's what it's all about - filling up the chest cavities and empty kneecaps and elbows.
Jimi Hendrix
See, that's nothing but blues, that's all I'm singing about. It's today's blues.
Jimi Hendrix
Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded.
Jimi Hendrix
The reflection of the world is blues, that's where that part of the music is at. Then you got this other kind of music that's tryin' to come around.
Jimi Hendrix
The story of life is quicker then the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello, goodbye.
Jimi Hendrix
The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.
Jimi Hendrix
To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?
Jimi Hendrix
We have time, there's no big rush.
Jimi Hendrix
When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.
Jimi Hendrix
When I die, just keep playing the records.
Jimi Hendrix
When I played God Bless The Queen, I was wondering if they was gonna dig us, then quite naturally I'd go on and try to get it together.
Jimi Hendrix
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix
When things get too heavy, just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.
Jimi Hendrix
When we go to play, you flip around and flash around and everything, and then
they're not gonna see nothin' but what their eyes see. Forget about their ears.
Jimi Hendrix
White collar conservative flashin down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me,
they all assume my kind will drop and die, but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.
Jimi Hendrix
You don't have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. You don't have to keep flashing those words all the time.
Jimi Hendrix
You have to forget about what other people say, when you're supposed to die, or
when you're supposed to be loving. You have to forget about all these things.
Jimi Hendrix
You have to give people something to dream on.
Jimi Hendrix
You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.
Jimi Hendrix
I'm not giving up my history and what I've done in my music because I love it and I'm very proud of it. I just want to open it up for more people.
LL Cool J
I wear glasses and suits, so I guess I am an indie artist.
Stevie Jackson
The blues is a low-down shakin' chill.
Robert Johnson
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.
Janis Joplin
Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.
Janis Joplin
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
Janis Joplin
Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl.
Janis Joplin
I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.
Janis Joplin
I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port
Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I.
Janis Joplin
I won't quit to become someone's old lady.
Janis Joplin
I'm one of those regular weird people.
Janis Joplin
If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time.
Janis Joplin
My father wouldn't get us a TV, he wouldn't allow a TV in the house.
Janis Joplin
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
Janis Joplin
On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.
Janis Joplin
Rock on out.
Janis Joplin
Texas is OK if you want to settle down and do your own thing quietly, but it's not for outrageous people, and I was always outrageous.
Janis Joplin
When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love,
when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.
Janis Joplin
You got to get it while you can.
Janis Joplin
You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things.
Janis Joplin
My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.
Mark Knopfler
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
John Lennon
Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, the morning-stars their ancient music make.
James Russell Lowell
The violin, through the serene clarity of its song, helps to keep our bearings in the storm, as a
light in the night, a compass in the tempest, it shows us a way to a haven of sincerity and respect.
Yehudi Menuhin
I just got to a point where I was lying to myself constantly, so I had to face up to that. It was a lot
of... I don't want to use the words self sacrifice,
but that's what it felt like. It was giving up
who I thought I was and starting over from scratch and realizing the man that I am was good enough.
Ivan Moody
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
Jim Morrison
Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.
Jim Morrison
Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the
senses the windows of the soul.
When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence.
Jim Morrison
Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.
Jim Morrison
Drugs are a bet with your mind.
Jim Morrison
Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.
Jim Morrison
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
Jim Morrison
Film spectators are quiet vampires.
Jim Morrison
Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel.
Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
Jim Morrison
Hatred is a very underestimated emotion.
Jim Morrison
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me
to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.
Jim Morrison
I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.
Jim Morrison
I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can
get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something.
Jim Morrison
I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.
Jim Morrison
I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
Jim Morrison
I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.
Jim Morrison
I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
Jim Morrison
I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity
that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.
Jim Morrison
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
Jim Morrison
It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where your going to end
up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice.
Jim Morrison
Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
Jim Morrison
Love cannot save you from your own fate.
Jim Morrison
Music inflames temperament.
Jim Morrison
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot
more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.
Jim Morrison
Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules
to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.
Jim Morrison
Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.
Jim Morrison
The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.
Jim Morrison
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your
reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.
Jim Morrison
The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces.
They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.
Jim Morrison
The time to hesitate is through.
Jim Morrison
There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.
Jim Morrison
This is the strangest life I've ever known.
Jim Morrison
Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.
Jim Morrison
We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.
Jim Morrison
When you make your peace with authority, you become authority.
Jim Morrison
Where's your will to be weird?
Jim Morrison
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
Jim Morrison
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your
horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Charlie Parker
Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it is the triumphant twang of a bedspring.
S. J. Perelman
Oppan Gangnam style.
Gangnam Style
(song).
PSY
I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.
Bonnie Raitt
Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups
with guitars, particularly, are finished. . . . The Beatles have no future in show business.
Dick Rowe
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Underneath runs the main current of preoccupation, which is keeping one's nose clean at all times. This means that
when things go wrong you have to pass the blame along the line, like pass-the-parcel, till the music stops.
Tom Stoppard
It is everyone's prerogative to retire. But it's like giving up on life as far as I'm concerned.
Roger Taylor
Growing Stronger
emerged from a need to relate my life experiences as well as my constant
struggle to prevail each day, and as a reminder to myself of the importance of never giving up.
Thalía
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where
thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
Hunter S. Thompson
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different
drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy
I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!
Interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009.
Kanye West
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by
Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
Edith Wharton
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.
Oscar Wilde
O body swayed to music,
O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
William Butler Yeats
Music
