“He who sings, frightens away all his ills.”
“Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?”
“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.”
“I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.”
“I'd rather be dead than singing ''Satisfaction'' when I'm forty-five.”
“When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.”
“It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.”
“Swans sing before they die -- t'were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.”
“That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!”
“The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”
“This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.”
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.”
“It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.”
“If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.”
“Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.”
“I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”