I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.
Dolly PartonYou get a reputation for stability if you are stable for years.
Mark ZuckerbergI’d love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.
Dolly PartonMy music is influenced by L.A. culture.
Nipsey HussleI wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘
Brian EnoThe truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.
Taylor SwiftIt is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.
Woody AllenI can dance to just about anything.
Bad BunnyCar designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.
Erma BombeckWhen I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.
DrakeThe colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.
Elvis PresleyI really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.
Taylor SwiftI don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.
J. ColeI taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.
Dave GrohlNothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.
The WeekndThere weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.
Dave Grohl‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘
Dave GrohlI made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.
Amy WinehouseI wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.
Bruno MarsBiggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Big L, Tupac. That was, like, my top five, generally.
Kevin GatesI always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.
The WeekndWhenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).
Haruki MurakamiIf you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.
BonoI could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.
Bruno MarsBooks constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas JeffersonHawaiian music is beautiful and simple.
Bruno MarsOne of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.
David ByrneEvery day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.
Thomas CarlyleI think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.
Matthew McConaugheyMusic was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya AngelouI’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.
Brian EnoI think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?
Taylor SwiftMusic has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.
David ByrneSo there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.
Lady GagaMy dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.
Bruno MarsWhen I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.
Taylor SwiftI just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.
AuroraSitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.
Taylor SwiftWriting music is just like writing a book.
Billie EilishMine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘
Dolly PartonI’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.
Mr. TIt’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.
RihannaI was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.
Dolly PartonI never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.
Dolly PartonTogether with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.
Pope FrancisThe only time my records are going to be broken is by my own spawn. I’m going be training that child out the womb.
Conor McGregorThis land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.
Bob DylanPeople tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.
Bad BunnyI love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.
Maya AngelouSongs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.
Taylor SwiftPersuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.
AristotleTo remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.
John C. MaxwellA good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘
Barack ObamaIn my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.
Bruno MarsI always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.
Brian EnoEvery band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.
Brian EnoTelevision sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.
David ByrneMusic is well said to be the speech of angels.
Thomas CarlyleOne of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.
Taylor SwiftWhen I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.
Lana Del Rey