Music, Art and Madness Quotations and Proverbs

* some views expressed in these quotations not neccesarily endorsed by the author of this file.
* for entertainment only - history is not an exact science - dates and quotes not guaranteed for accuracy.

Added for January 2005:

One of the drawbacks of Fame is that one can never escape from it.

Maybe I just don't understand poetry. I admit it's not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
  • Raymond Clevie Carver Jr., 1933-1988 Cathedral (1983)
Don [Adams] and I were recently invited to visit the CIA for an exhibit they had of gadgets from "Get Smart," "I Spy," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E," and the Bond movies, and so forth. And they said that during those years, the CIA actually did watch those shows and made some of those devices actually work.
  • Barbara Feldon (1941- ) Agent 99: "Get Smart." _Knight-Ridder Newspapers_ [Mar 31, 2001]
It's depressing that the words =secret agent= have >become synonymous with =sex maniac=.
  • Sir James Bond (David Niven) > _Casino Royale_ [1967]
I lingered round them [tombstones], under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
  • Emily Bronte (1818-1848) _Wuthering Heights_ [1847], _Conclusion_
Boys are kept in the English Benedictine colleges solely and simply to sing hymns to the Virgin.
  • Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1536)
You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.
  • Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Always remeber that popularity is the number one most important thing in the life of a human being.
  • Dr. Chris Assaf of RKTV
I would love . . . a one-year break doing absolutely nothing. Now whether, as I say to my friends, I will take to the gin bottle at 11 o'clock in the morning, and drink myself or smoke myself to death, I don't know--but I'd love to find out.
  • Gay Byrne (1934- ) _Irish Post 16_ [May 1998]
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
  • George Eliot [Marian Evans Cross] (1819-1880)
Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.
  • Ava Gardner (1922-1990)_Ava_ [1983], Chapter 8)
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
  • Jack Kerouac
One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, gets shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways.
  • Peter McWilliams, You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought [Rev. Ed.], 1995.
Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer.
  • Nellie Melba (1865-1931)_Melodies and Memories_ [1925]
But I will say that I have did [sic] remarkable for one of my years and experience. As for publicity, that I'm too old to care for now.
  • Grandma Moses [Anna Mary Robertson] (1860-1961)
There is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know.
  • John Dryden 1631-1700 , Spanish Friar, II,i (1681)
A Cleveland disk jockey named Alan Freed was the first to scout the new market. Told about these crossover sales by a store owner... in June 1951, on his mostly white radio station, he started a rhythm and blues show for which he coined the euphemism "rock 'n' roll".
  • Todd Gitlin (1943- )_The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage_ [1987]
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down hill.
  • William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) _The Summing Up_ [1938]
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
  • Noel Coward (1899-1973)_Private Lives_ [1930], Act I
I feel uncomfortable listening to Beethoven. I think he is too personal, almost naked. Give me Bach, rather, and then more Bach.
  • Albert Einstein (1879-1955) interview with Lili Foldes, _The Etude_ [Jan. 1947])
I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was.
  • Keith Richards (1943- )
I had an incredible loathing of rock 'n' roll. If you liked jazz, you didn't touch rock 'n' roll.
  • Charlie Watts (1941- )
In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.
  • Carter G. Woodson (1875 ? 1950)
Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. . . . What a delight this is I cannot tell!
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
I do not welcome advice from actors, they are here to act.
  • Otto Preminger
Summertime... And the livin' is easy.
  • Ira Gershwin (1896-1983)_Porgy and Bess_ [1935],
Finally, as Jagger sang "Sympathy For The Devil," an 18-year-old black man, Meredith Hunter, pulled a gun on a Hell's Angel and he was stabbed and left dead, all in the midst of a packed crowd of thousands of people. . . . The Stones were not to play 'Sympathy For The Devil' again in public for six years.
  • Robert Allen Roskind_Memoirs Of An Ex-Hippie_ [2001]
It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
  • Oscar Wilde, "To Read, or Not to Read", _ Pall Mall Gazette_, Feb. 8, 1886
John Lennon was shot dead by a fan. Actors are targets.
  • Kirk Douglas [Issur Danielovitch] (1916- ) _The Ragman's Son_ [1988], Ch. 37
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be [a] break-through.
  • R. D. Laing (1927-1989) _The Politics of Experience_ [1967], Ch. 6
As the Detroit fires raged, one local radio station played "Light My Fire" over and over again. In the wake of the burnings the song took on a new meaning in an especially hot summer in America.
  • James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky _Break on Through: [1991], _The Doors_
Yellow is capable of charming God.
  • Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890
Milk is bad for you. Ask Pat Boone.
  • Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)

 

 

 

 

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