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 February 2007:

Everything you can imagine is real.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
  • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Musicians and music are regarded as worthless these days. Their work can be picked up free and shared. They are less valued than bottled water...
  • Pete Townshend in Michael Senft, "An endless wire to the Who" Arizona Republic, February 25,2007
When I started out, I was absolutely awful, I had no voice, I didn't have a lot of stage presence and most of the [interpretive] intensity that I brought to the experience was actually terror.
  • Jimmy Webb
You go to the theater to be surprised.
  • Bruce Marks, Artistic Director Boston Ballet
Some days I hear a voice taking me to another place. Some days are better than others.
  • Bono, U2, "Some Days Are Better Than Others"
I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.
  • Peter O'Toole, early 1960s
I chased perpetual pleasure and got a full measure of pain as a payback.
  • David Crosby, Introduction, _Long Time Gone_, w/Carl Gottlieb
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
  • John Ruskin, Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854)
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.
  • Abbie Hoffman 1936–1989 (alleged suicide)
There are so many songs in me that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue;
The time has come for me to pay for yesterday. When I was young.
  • Roy Clark _Yesterday When I Was Young_ [1965] (Words and music by Charles Asnavour, English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer)
Wine is sunlight held together by water.
  • Galileo
I used to drink to forget the past. Now I drink to forget the future.
  • "Lockhorns" Cartoon, by Bunny Hoest & John Reiner.
I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities which made me an archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile, the wise will ponder): 'A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Mechanism in Thought and Morals"
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman; it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the human.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
But for me to want to choreograph a piece, there's got to be some twist to it, something odd. A certain weirdness. [...] A lot of music I choose is the opposite of what people would choose to dance to.
  • Mark Morris, quoted in A Terry Teachout Reader
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