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 November 2008:

You know, you can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
  • Scott Adams (1957 - ), 'The Dilbert Principle'
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
  • Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939)
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
  • Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)
Unbearably lovely music is heard as the curtain rises, and we see the woods on a summer afternoon. A fawn dances on and nibbles slowly at some leaves. He drifts lazily through the soft foliage. Soon he starts coughing and drops dead.
  • Woody Allen (1935 - ), Without Feathers
As I was walking up the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
  • Hughes Mearns
The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'
  • Roy Blount Jr.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
  • Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
  • Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)
Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
  • Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930)
The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.
  • Virgil Thomson (1896 - 1989)
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
  • Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965)
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
  • Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

 

 

 

 

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