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.

Rerun : "Best of November 2004" (14)

I was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing would have driven me through all that if I was normal.

We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first--rock and roll or Christianity.
  • John Lennon (1940-1980)_Interview in London Evening Standard_Mar. 4, 1966
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the bloody night, or when you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is.
  • John Lennon (1940-1980)
When I was a young man, I thought something was going to happen to me. I thought I was going to be famous. I didn't know what it was, specifically. I certainly didn't think it was going to be [for] murdering John Lennon.
  • Mark David Chapman
A letter sent to the parole board on behalf of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, had again asked that parole be denied (for Mark David Chapman, )
  • Los Angeles Times [October 6, 2004]
The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.
  • Pablo Casals (?-1973)
Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
  • Dr. Joyce Brothers
Verdi... has bursts of marvellous passion. His passion is brutal, it is true, but it is better to be impassioned in this way than not at all. His music at times exasperates, but it never bores.
  • Georges Bizet (1818-75), letter, 1859
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you're doing--even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
  • Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) In M. Bowden's _Quotable Jazz_ 2002
It takes twenty years to make an overnight success.
  • Eddie Cantor (1892-1964)
My dear young sir. As I am the offended party, the choice of weapons is mine. We shall fight with orthography. You are already dead!
  • Cornelia Otis Skinner, _Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals_ 1962
Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.
  • Thorndike
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
  • Anonymous
Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.
  • Glenn Reynolds

 

 

 

 

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