* 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.
There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
How rare, how precious is frivolity! How few writers can prostitute all their powers! They are always implying, "I am capable of higher things."
I drink to forget I drink.
It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.
But it's alright now, I've learned my lesson well;
You see, you can't please everyone, So you've got to please yourself.
A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home sickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment.
A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.
Music is just the thing which helps you to see higher.
Homosexuality is God's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children.
Life is a big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
I ran a tight ship. No dope, no booze, no hard language. We became known as the milk shake band.
There's an old man sitting next to me -- Making love to his tonic and gin.
...in a world apart, cloistered, defined and absolute, in which to devote all the strength and intelligence of his manhood to the service of the thing which he is making. This is true of every art; the ennui of living and willing ceases on the threshold of every studio or workshop.
Music hath charm to soothe a savage beast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
During the session, Ringo turned to me and said, "I certainly would like to record some of your songs." ...Right between his eyes on that famous nose I saw the prettiest dollar sign I had ever seen in my life.
The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters --Torn apart
Sunday, Bloody Sunday -- Sunday, Bloody Sunday
I think she [Janis Joplin] allowed women to have their pain. Her thing was so born from her pain. Her amazing talent was because of the pain she had. . . .
When Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin invented the [glass] Harmonica, he concealed it from his wife till the instrument was fit to play; and then woke her with it one night, when she took it for the music of angels.
The most important thing in acting is honesty: if you can fake that, you've got it made.
Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly.
I'd never make a good critic. I just like to relax and enjoy music, but when it comes to criticizing, I'm afraid to hurt people's feelings.
Anything Sam Cooke did I would do . . . apart from getting shot in a hotel room by a hooker.
And after a while the man with the guitar stood up and yawned. Good night, folks, he said.
And they murmured, Good night to you.
And each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing.
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
Oh darkly deeply beautifully blue! As someone somewhere sings about the sky.
Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.
Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.
We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.
Very often [the poetic vision] comes slowly, bit by bit, like a scene set on the stage. At other times, however, it is sudden and fleeting. Something passes before your eyes, and it must be seized quickly or it is lost.
Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can't hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble.
Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal.
As an only child, Elvis became deeply attached to his mother, Gladys, who provided unfailing support and shared his dream of one day becoming a singing star. For his 12th birthday, Gladys got him a $12.95 guitar. He rarely let it out of his hands.
As long as she continued to sing out and to add and subtract, the doctors kept cutting away, destroying a larger and larger area of the brain . . . . Rosemary had been Rose's child, Rose's burden, and her daughter was now [after the operation] like a painting that had been brutally slashed so it was scarcely recognizable.
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
I'm one of those artists who feels like she's been taken advantage of, but I'm not bitter about it at all. I was royally robbed, but I don't care. I am richer than I was before.
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.
Art depends on the solitude of inspired, talented, or neurotic egotists. In its expression, it may ease their agonies (for half an hour); it may bring delight and consolation to some-those hearing Mahler's Ninth one night in San Francisco. But Mahler's Ninth on that occasion did not house one homeless person. Renoir's La GrandeIllusion, unequalled in its antiwar sentiments, was prelude to a fresh war. . . .
I feel deprived of the profit of the experience that should have compensated my effort. I am ungrateful without remorse.
Matisse's painting [Le Bateau] hung upside down in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for forty-seven days before anyone noticed (October 18 to December 4, 1961). In that period 116,000 people had visited the gallery.
Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs.
You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.
We gotta do better, it's time to begin
You know all the answers must come from within, so
Come on and take a free ride (free ride)
Come on and sit here by my side
Come on and take a free ride
William Maxwell knew something about inconsolable grief.... New York City is a place where one can weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy.