Great Musician Quotes

• One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

  Bob Marley

  Funny, Music, Wisdom

  Song: Trenchtown Rock

  405 Copy quote

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• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

  Aldous Huxley

  Motivational, Music, Wisdom

  Music at Night (1931) p. 17

  90 Copy quote

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• Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

  25 Copy quote

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• Where words fail, music speaks.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Hans Christian Andersen (1876). “Stories for the Young”

  184 Copy quote

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• A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

  Leopold Stokowski

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Leopold Stokowski's address to an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times, May 11, 1967.

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• Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

  Mark Twain

  Music, Witty, Humorous

  Autobiography (published in 1924).

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• They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

  Pablo Picasso

  Life, Motivational, Music

  "LIFE", Vol. 57, nr. 11, (p. 9), September 11, 1964.

  167 Copy quote

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• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• 

  Music is your own experience, your own 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

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

  76 Copy quote

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• If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

  John Lennon

  Love, Life, Happiness

  Guitar Player, August 01, 2004.

  80 Copy quote

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• Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Sound And Music, Musical Life

  144 Copy quote

• They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

  Edgar Wilson Nye

  Music, Sound, Opera

  8 Copy quote

• Man, there's no boundary line to art!

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. (Oscar trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket)

  Oscar Levant

  Music, Trying, Movement

  14 Copy quote

• Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Memorable, Night

  48 Copy quote

• Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Time, Bills

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.193, Simon and Schuster

  65 Copy quote

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• Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Music, Years, Piano

  62 Copy quote

• 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

  38 Copy quote

• When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.

  John McLaughlin

  Funny, Inspiring, Musician

  4 Copy quote

• I didn't want to be precious about things. Of course, the idea is to make great music, but if you have great musicians up there, it gives me some leeway to play around a little bit.

  Fiona Apple

  Play, Ideas, Giving

  Interview with Carrie Battan, pitchfork.com. October 7, 2013.

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• In my view a jazz musician is a great musician

  Michael Parkinson

  Views, Musician, Jazz

  4 Copy quote

• I never use someone just because they are great musicians. I work with people who have the same kind of feeling towards the music that I do, and the subject that I'm speaking of at that time.

  Angelique Kidjo

  People, Feelings, Musician

  4 Copy quote

• I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.

  Charles Lloyd

  Mother, Men, Blessing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• These musicians, such as these Cubans in Havana, are a part of a scene that did produce great music and great musicians. They came from this tradition, so it's a good place to look. It's like prospecting: You gotta know where to look.

  Ry Cooder

  Musician, Looks, Tradition

  Source: www.avclub.com

  17 Copy quote

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