Music Quotes - Page 30

• We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.

  Ishmael Reed

  Eye, Light, Intellectual

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

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• Oh, I'm a martyr to music.

  Dylan Thomas

  Musician, Martyr

  Dylan Thomas (1954). “Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

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• My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Travel, Men, Smell

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• The bar... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable-and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.

  Luis Bunuel

  Exercise, Dark, Alcohol

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The music is in minors.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Musician, Music Is, Minors

  Gwendolyn Brooks (1971). “The world of Gwendolyn Brooks”, Harpercollins

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• One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

  Johan Huizinga

  Mean, History, Understanding

  Johan Huizinga (2014). “Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance”, p.54, Princeton University Press

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• The things which can make life enjoyable remain the same. They are, now as before, reading, music, fine arts, travel, the enjoyment of nature, sports, fashion, social vanity (knightly orders, honorary offices, gatherings) and the intoxication of the senses.

  Johan Huizinga

  Sports, Fashion, Art

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• There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.

  Paul Klee

  Art, Learning, Roots

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• Light threatens, is active, is gone,
  so it is with a song.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Song, Light, Gone

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.401, New Directions Publishing

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• Music sets up ladders,
  it makes us invisible,
  it sets us apart,
  it lets us escape;
  but from the visible
  there is no escape.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Ladders, Invisible, Musician

  Hilda Doolittle (1998). “Trilogy”, New Directions Publishing

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• Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
  The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
  For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
  Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.

  John Ashbery

  Horse, Past, Wind

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

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• So I cradle this average violin that knows
  Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
  The possibility of free declamation anchored
  To a dull refrain.

  John Ashbery

  Average, Dull, Violin

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

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• A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Art, Laughing, Tears

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• People of talent resemble a musical instrument more closely than they do a musician. Without outside help, they produce not a single sound, but given even the slightest touch, and a magnificent tune emanates from them.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Inspirational, People, Sound

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• An animal can learn to fight, but to sing beautiful things and make people believe them.

  Dalton Trumbo

  Beautiful, Believe, Fighting

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• Down the road someone is practicing scales,
  The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails

  Louis MacNeice

  Sound, Tails, Littles

  Louis Macneice, “Sunday Morning”

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• When you are listening to music it is better to cover your eyes than your ears.

  Jose Bergamin

  Eye, Over You, Listening

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• When I listen to the engine of my car, I might say it sounds fine, but it would not occur to me to say "What lovely music!

  Jose Bergamin

  Car, Lovely, Sound

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• Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.

  Jose Bergamin

  Opposites, Doe, Way

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• We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimedgreat when we really mean he is outstanding.

  Eleanor Robson Belmont

  Art, Mean, Often Is

  Eleanor Robson Belmont (1957). “The Fabric of Memory”

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• I traveled and made money and I wouldn't let anybody get between me and my music. If I belong to anything, I belong to my music. ...What you were born to do, you don't stop to think, should I? could I? would I? I only think, will I? And, I shall!

  Eva Jessye

  Commitment, Thinking, Born

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• The old men of the village of Mahotière say that the Mistress of the Water is a mulatto woman. At midnight she comes out of the spring and sings while combing her dripping long hair, which makes a sound sweeter than a violin. It is a song of perdition for whomever hears it. There is no sign of the Cross, no "Our Father" to save him. Her curse takes him like a fish in a net and the Mistress of the Water awaits him on the edge of the spring and smiles upon him and tells him to follow her to the depths, from which he will never return.

  Jacques Roumain

  Song, Father, Spring

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• And at dawn, the drums still beat on the sleepless plain like an unstoppable heart.

  Jacques Roumain

  Heart, Dawn, Unstoppable

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• Art is beauty, and every exposition of art, whether it be music, painting, or the drama, should be subservient to that one great end. As long as nature is a means to the attainment of beauty, so-called realism is necessary and permissable [sic], but it must be realism enhanced by idealism and uplifted by the spirit of an inner life or purpose.

  Julia Marlowe

  Beauty, Art, Drama

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• I was just glad to get the Grammy. I didn't know what the thing was. It's the honor what I loved.

  Elizabeth Cotten

  Art, Honor, Performing

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