All Quotes By Tag: Music

“The Qu’ran is God’s song, not ours, not even Muhammad’s. To allow such a song to pass through one’s body, however imperfectly, is to discover that the instrument is transformed by the music.”

“At Camp Don Bosco, there were Bibles all over the place, mostly 1970s hippie versions like Good News for Modern Man. They had groovy titles like The Word or The Way, and translated the Bible into “contemporary English,” which meant Saul yelling at Jonathan, “You son of a bitch!” (I Samuel 20:30). Awesome! The King James version gave this verse as “Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman,” which was bogus in comparison. Maybe these translations went a bit far. I recall one of the Bibles translating the inscription over the cross, “INRI” (Iesus Nazaremus Rex Iudaeorum), as “SSDD” (Same Shit Different Day), and another describing the Last Supper — the night before Jesus’ death, a death he freely accepted — where Jesus breaks the bread, gives it to his disciples, and says, “It’s better to burn out than fade away,” but these memories could be deceptive.”

“It doesn’t matter how many drugs I take, I’m not fulfilled. This isn’t satisfying. There’s a spiritual hunger going on. Everybody feels it. If you don’t feel it now, you will. Trust me. You will… Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s the real rebellion.”

“….Charles laughingly observed,’Gospel and the blues are really, if you break it down, almost the same thing. It’s just a question of whether you’re talkin’ about a woman or God.”

“Remember no more your misery, listen to good music.”

“She’s into authentic hearts and mind shattering conversations. Good music and quirky art. Weirdness and eccentric people. Love, kindness and genuine souls. She’s into all this and so much more.”

“Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both.”

“Calling for change and being part of making change are two very different things. Stop calling for change and be a part of making the change you want to see.”

“I believe music is the good vibrations that heal parts of us we don’t understand yet. And God forbid we ever do. We aren’t supposed to know everything. The desire and need to know everything is the greatest insecurity one can have.”

“Literature is painting, architecture, and music.”

“If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.”

“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.”

“Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year’s fragments into a ‘sextet for overlapping soloists’: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late.”

“The best thing about Art is that the people who create it live forever.”

“There are songs that you play that you have to restart, and songs that you play that you never get right. But when a song is complete, there is no more you can do.”