Quotes About Songs

“I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

“Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.”

— Abigail Tarttelin

“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”

— Frederick Douglass

“If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while.”

— Tom Lehrer

“And so well did they hide themselves in their love that grass grew over their hearts and all their loud songs became indecipherable ribbons of air.”

— Jesse Ball

“It occurred that the birds, whose twitters and repeated songs sounded so pretty and affirming of nature and the coming day, might actually, in a code known only to other birds, be the birds each saying 'Get away' or 'This branch is mine!' or 'This tree is mine! I'll kill you! Kill, kill!' Or any manner of dark, brutal, or self-protective stuff
they might be listening to war cries. The thought came from nowhere and made his spirits dip from some reason.”

— David Foster Wallace

“You've got the shirt and the haircut and the sash and you know all the songs, but you're no urban guerrilla. You're an urban dreamer. You turn over rubbish bins and scrawl on walls in the name of The People, who'd clip you round the ear if they found you doing it. But you believe.”

— Terry Pratchett

“I have a lot of creative control, so I can decide what I want to wear, what I want my brand to look like, what I want my songs to sound like, so I don't sound like some fake artist that people can't relate to.”

— Daya

“I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material.”

— Emmylou Harris

“Do broken pianos play broken songs? Do they have busted melodies for busted hearts? Is there a song living inside it that's waiting to get out? Her keys are shattered and her notes long since silent but I can still hear her song. Just listen, just listen.”

— Tyler Knott Gregson

“Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.”

— Gwen Stefani

“The popular songs that were written in the 1920s and '30s, '40s and early '50s were written by veterans - mostly men who'd had experience in life. How can you write a lyric if you haven't really lived life?”

— Rudy Vallee

“I'm always looking for great songs, and not being much of a songwriter, I depend on great songwriters to send them to me. I go through tons of stuff, and sometimes you just find material that kind of fits and becomes something special.”

— George Strait

“Not being a natural songwriter ... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.”

— Bonnie Raitt

“You can use songs, scriptures and godly pictures to chart your thought-course in the right direction.”

— Jaachynma N.E. Agu

“So while I drove my little and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I'l never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example:
I love you
You love me
Thank God for that
I'm so happy
And Ty's personal favorite (which he helped me on):
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don't lead cows to slaughter
I love you and I know
I should've told you soon-a
But you didn't buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
TY asked me if I got the hidden message in his poem. I told him it was loud and clear.”

— T.J. Klune

“You wore your clothes like armor, but in your songs you opened all the way up. You were willing to expose yourself without caring what anyone thought. I wish I was more like that.”

— Ava Dellaira

“Heartbreak is good fuel for country songs. And cheating.”

— Miranda Lambert

“Nowadays it seems to me nobody takes trouble about anything, especially writing songs.”

— Marian McPartland

“When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.”

— Colbie Caillat

“Songs are not on a conveyor belt. I'm not chopping them up and putting them out.”

— Maxwell

“I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.”

— Teena Marie

“Coming from the U.K., I can think of so many great songs and musical moments that didn't require a belter of a voice; my favorite singer is Kate Bush and she's not a belter, or PJ Harvey ... I'm definitely more of an alternative girl.”

— Carmen Ejogo

“My aspirations aren't to sell millions of records, but to write really good songs.”

— Tom Odell

“I'm not just a voice who wants to sing on anything. I co-produce, I want to select who comes in and plays on what songs, who to duet with and all of it.”

— Tyrese Gibson

“Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, 'I'm New Here,' doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.”

— Will Hermes

“As a singer, I just want to try to honor what the writers create - and as someone who's trying to write songs, I just hope I can stand in their company and not embarrass myself.”

— David Nail

“Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.”

— Pete Townshend

“In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.”

— George R.R. Martin

“I'm not just a singer-songwriter doing songs in the key of me.”

— Arlo Guthrie

“I like Stevie Wonder as my favorite non-pianist pianist. I mean, I shouldn't call him a non-pianist, because he's really a great pianist, but he doesn't feature it that much - he uses his keyboards and his piano technique to support his great songs and so forth, but he can really blow.”

— Chick Corea

“In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.”

— Steve Martin

“I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear?”

— Susan Orlean

“I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.”

— Spike Jonze

“I only know the lyrics to songs that I listened to between the ages of 11 and 15.”

— Elizabeth Banks

“Back in the day, I came up with the expression "Same Animal - Different Cages" to describe our songs. I suppose over the years I've just broadened the meaning of that.”

— David First

“Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children's games as well-running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs.”

— Greg Bear

“From a literary standpoint, I've been loving Raymond Carver's short stories, William Carlos Williams' poems, Richard Siken's 'Crush', John Fante, and Jim Harrison's book of ghazals. I love film and photography too, so many of my songs are very image rich from those influences.”

— Greta Salpeter

“The best songs are the ones about Georgia, even though I've never been there. It's the only place I still believe in Jesus.”

— Buddy Wakefield

“I'm not confident about my appearance, I'm not confident about anything really in my life, I'm a very tortured soul when it comes to self-confidence, but when it comes to my pop songs, if I started to question, I would never stop questioning.”

— Torquil Campbell

“Name ten songs you want to hear again before you die, get all of your friends together and scream them. Because right now all you have is time, but someday that time will run out. That's the only thing you can be absolutely certain about.”

— Paul Baribeau

“I want to sing songs which will touch people's hearts.”

— Kim Kyu-jong

“I liked Jim Morrison a lot as a person. He was this very poetic character, and death was always on his mind. And it showed up in his songs - I mean, almost every song he wrote had something to do with dying. He was an American treasure that went way too soon.”

— Alice Cooper

“There's always something extremely personal in the songs, but I may change the point of view from what I actually experienced.”

— Annie E. Clark

“I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.”

— Jens Lekman

“Troubled times do call for troubled songs, songs that unsettle our souls and our spirits unapologetically.”

— Tavis Smiley

“Here are some funny songs, there are some songs that we didn't even remember. I heard this song that Ringo is singing, I still don't know the title of it, but it is got the most amazing lyrics and it's a quite a good production. And quite a good tun”

— George Harrison

“Cheryl Cole, if you're reading this, I may not be as prety as you but at least I write my own songs.”

— Lily Allen

“By the time I was six or seven-years-old, I had learned several techniques of how to use my voice and was able to choose the sound I wanted to distinguish myself, so I started writing songs on the piano.”

— Wendy Starland