Music

Human Will and Human Fate:
What is little, what is great?
Howsoe'er the answer be,
Let me sing of what I know.
~ William Allingham, from Irish Songs and Poems (1887). A Stormy Night

Sometimes the best songs almost write themselves.
~ Bill Anderson, quoted in Criswell Freeman The Book of Country Music Wisdom (1994).

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a life-style. There are a lot of bands around who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it's all about. It's a life-style I chose for myself.
~ Billie Joe Armstrong, New York Rock magazine (April 1998). Interview with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day

Most people speak of music merely subjectively, speak of how they like it or do not like it; only the few speak or think of it objectively, of what is really is or is not.
~ William Foster Apthorp, from Musicians and Music-Lovers, and Other Essays (1894). Musicians and Music-Lovers

As I played songs and played all my calls, I would go over to Company C, which was an all black outfit, and we had our jam sessions. And that's when they nicknamed me the "Bugle Boy from Company B," because I fit that -- I fit that like a glove, you know.
~ Bill "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" Arter, CNN TV "American Morning" (3 July 2006).

If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.
~ William James "Count" Basie

It's the way you play that makes it. ... Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.
~ William James "Count" Basie, in Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (1985).

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.
~ William James "Count" Basie, in Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (1985).

[W]hen the music sounds the sweetliest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest into my mind.
~ (Lord Bishop) William Beveridge, in Private Thoughts Upon Religion, Digested Into Twelve Articles (1709). Resolutions: Concerning My Actions. V

Piper, pipe that song again!
~ William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (1789). Introduction

Why should the devil have all the best tunes?
~ William Booth (commenting on "Champagne Charlie is my name"), (22 January 1882).

And since September 11 and the war with Iraq, I think people are more attuned to music that's got something to say. It's just a shame that such things have to happen for more people to get into it.
~ Billy Bragg, The West Australian (16 September 2003). Bragg blends new and old

One of the hardest things to do in rock'n'roll is walk it like you talk it.
~ Billy Bragg, BBC News (24 December 2002). Billy Bragg: The Joe I knew

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.
~ Billy Bragg, BBC News (24 December 2002). Billy Bragg: The Joe I knew

You can only make political music if you have a context. ... You cannot make political music in a vacuum. It'd be like me writing songs now about Margaret Thatcher. It'd just make no sense. But I think in the wake of 9-11 people are trying to articulate their feelings.
~ Billy Bragg, CNN TV (17 December 2002). The political music of Billy Bragg

If you can play the tune better than me, it's yours!
~ Big Bill Broonzy

Almost all occupations are cheered and lightened by music.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Orations and Addresses (1873). Music in the Public Schools (address delivered in 1856)

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea what popular Turkish music is like.
~ Bill Bryson

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

The Beatles are not merely awful ... they are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

Music is found often not beautiful,
Because it always connected with noise.
~ Wilhelm Busch, Dideldum! (1890). The Mole

The exercise of singing is delightful to Nature, and good to preserve the health of man.
~ William Byrd, from Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, Made Into Musicke Of Fiue Parts (1588).

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915). Part II. The Song of the Lark

There is great music coming out of Africa, and it is important for people to know about it. ... We need to promote living composers that do things that reflect African music.
~ William Chapman Nyaho, The Seattle Times (20 February 2003). William Chapman Nyaho: Piano is his calling -- and his passion

O Music, sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!
~ William Taylor Collins, from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746). The Passions: An Ode to Music

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung.
~ William Taylor Collins, from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746). The Passions: An Ode to Music

By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
~ William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697). Act I, scene i

Music alone with sudden Charms can bind
The wand'ring Sense, and calm the troubled Mind.
~ William Congreve, A Hymn to Harmony (1703).

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
~ William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697). Act I, scene i

[T]he lewd trebles squeak nothing but bawdy, and the basses roar blasphemy.
~ William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700). Act V, scene v

Brian Wilson the astronaut, peering down from the Heavens, cooly dreaming of California girls. An idealized pop utopia that widens the senses and soothes the ears. Lands the spaceship, finds nothing but disco and platform shoes and decided to take another trip around the moon for good measure and to search for the elusive lonely harmony. Landing back down for the millennium, our astronaut decided it's time. Time to stop and hear what he's brought back.
~ Billy Corgan, in Brian Wilson Productions (2002). BrianWilson.com Quotes

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.
~ Billy Corgan

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.
~ Billy Corgan

Nothing separates the generations more than music.
~ Bill Cosby, Fatherhood (1986). Chapter 10

How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book VI. The Winter Walk At Noon

Now let us sing,
Long live the king.
~ William Cowper, The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1782).

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book VI. The Winter Walk At Noon

Music, to a nice ear, is a hazardous amusement, as long attention to it is very fatiguing.
~ William Cullen, First Lines Of The Practice Of Physic (1777).

I don't want you to be true;
I just want to make love to you.
~ William James "Willie" Dixon, I Just Want to Make Love to You

The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The Sorrow Songs

Bach played with his themes like a jolly juggler, throwing them into the air, turning them inside out, tumbling them upside down, then setting them soundly on their feet again. Notes and themes were not only his meat and drink and atmosphere, they were also his relaxation and his holidays.
~ William James "Will" Durant

Music was as vital as the church edifice itself, more deeply stirring than all the glory of glass or stone. Many a stoic soul, doubtful of the creed, was melted by the music, and fell on his knees before the mystery that no words could speak.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume IV (1950). The Age of Faith

When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed.
~ Bill Evans

I want to play as good as I can, not necessarily as different. I am not interested in consciously changing the essence of my music. I would rather have it reveal itself progressively as I play. Ultimately, what counts is its essential quality, anyway, and differences vanish in a short time.
~ Bill Evans, Down Beat Magazine (1960).

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
~ Bill Evans, Down Beat Magazine (1960).

When I sing, to me every word has a feeling about it. I had to linger, had to hold it, I didn't want to let go of it. I want to hold one word through a whole line of melody, to linger with it all the way down. I didn't want to let go of that no more than I wanted to let go of the woman I loved. I didn't want to lose it.
~ William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell

We should be judged as musicians, and bloody fine ones at that.
~ Liam Gallagher

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.
~ Billy Gibbons

Turn on, tune up, rock out.
~ Billy Gibbons

Music is a friend of labor, for it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the worker and makes work pleasanter as well as profitable.
~ William Green

A wandering minstrel I --
A thing of shreds and patches.
Of ballads, songs and snatches,
And dreamy lullaby!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera).

Here's a how-de-doo!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera).

Here's a state of things!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera).

Sing "Hey to you -- good day to you."
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Patience (1881 opera).

I was at the center of the jazz scene. ... It was an exhilarating experience. I was the city's "Mr. Jazz" by the age of 23. Wow, Mom!
~ William P. Gottlieb (on writing newspaper articles and presenting radio shows in Washington during 1938-43), in Civilization magazine (September-October 1995). The Faces of Jazz

They called me everything from a rambling honky-tonk hitter to a waterlogged harmonica player.
~ Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

This land is your land this land is my land,
From California to the New York Island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulfstream waters,
This land was made for you and me.
~ Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

I sat down one night and wrote the line rock, rock, rock everybody. I was going to use the word "stomp" -- like rock, rock, rock and them stomp, stomp, stomp. But that didn't fit. I went from one word to another and finally came up with "roll."
~ William John Clifton ("Bill") Haley

We steer completely clear of anything suggestive! We take a lot of care with lyrics because we don't want to offend anybody. The music is the main thing, and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.
~ William John Clifton ("Bill") Haley, (1954)

Nothing made me glow so much as seeing the softening effect of music on racial antagonisms.
~ W.C. (William Christopher) Handy

The Negroes invented jazz, and the white folks made an industry out of it.
~ W.C. (William Christopher) Handy, in The New York Times (29 March 1958). W. C. Handy, Composer, Is Dead; Author of 'St. Louis Blues,' 84

The moral influences of music are of two kinds: it has a tendency to wean the mind from vicious and sensual indulgences; and, if properly, directed, it has a tendency to incline the heart to kindly feelings, and just and generous emotions.
~ William (W.E.) Hickson, Lecture, London Mechanics Institute (1837).

Everyone's got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
~ Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography).

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.
~ Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography). Chapter 4

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.
~ Billie Holiday, Attributed

Maybe he couldn't cut the cats at the Savoy in Harlem, but he sure could dance.
~ Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography).

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.
~ Billie Holiday, quoted in Famous Black Quotations (1995).

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
~ Billie Holiday, (refering to God Bless the Child)

What comes out is what I feel. I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.
~ Billie Holiday

Words well up freely without necessity or intent, and there may well have been no wandering horde that did not already have its own songs. For man as a species is a singing creature, though the notes, in his case, are also coupled with thought.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species (1856 translation).

Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XVI and XVII: Mysticism

A typical day in the life of a heavy-metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.
~ Billy Joel

Classical music always had a great influence on me. In fact some of my songs have a classical theme in mind.
~ Billy Joel, Lecture at the University of Scranton Cultural Center, Scranton PA (12 March 1996). Billy Joel, An Evening of Questions And Answers ... And A Little Music

Hot funk, cold punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock and roll to me.
~ Billy Joel, in Glass Houses (1980 album). It's Still Rock and Roll to Me

I can't think of one person I've ever met who didn't like some type of music. More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.
~ Billy Joel, Commencement Address at Berklee College of Music (May 1993).

I don't think of myself as a singer. The only reason I ever got onstage was to meet girls.
~ Billy Joel

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by.
~ Billy Joel

I'm kind of in a dark place. And I know some people are actually excited about that, because they think I'll write an album about being sad. But that's not what my music is about. There have been times when I've done that, but I'm not going to do it again.
~ Billy Joel, The New York Times Magazine (15 September 2002). The Stranger

No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.
~ Billy Joel

People in music lie, but they don't expect you to believe them. People in television actually expect you to believe the lies.
~ Billy Joel, Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton NJ (March 1994).

People who are looking for art in rock 'n' roll or pop are looking for something that either doesn't or shouldn't exist.
~ Billy Joel

Rock and roll cola wars, I can't take it any more.
~ Billy Joel

Rock and roll used to be for kicks, now a days it's politics.
~ Billy Joel

Rolling Stone magazine would not say anything positive about me, and they were the tastemakers at the time. There were people from the old guard who insisted I wasn't a real rock and roller. Well, O.K., fine -- I'm not a real rock and roller. You got me.
~ Billy Joel (on his musical output from 1976 to 1982), The New York Times Magazine (15 September 2002). The Stranger

Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright.
~ Billy Joel, in Piano Man (1973 album). Piano Man

Singles don't represent me. Albums do.
~ Billy Joel, Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton NJ (March 1994).

Videos destroyed the vitality of rock and roll. Before that, music said, "Listen to me." Now it says, "Look at me."
~ Billy Joel, The New York Daily News (16 October 2001). Billy Joel in a Classical State of Mind; The Rocker Turns Romantic Composer in a New Collection of Piano Pieces

Playin' jazz is talkin' from the heart. You don't lie.
~ Willie Geary "Bunk" Johnson

Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.
~ Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Music is a secret arithmetical exercise and the person who indulges in it does not realize that he is manipulating numbers.
~ Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Yes, the strongest make
Their music out of thinking and heart-break --
~ William Ellery Leonard, from Two Lives: A Poem (1923).

Music is a science that would have us laugh and sing and dance.
~ Guillaume de Machaut, Ode à la Musique (c. 1372).

Music doesn't follow rules, scales, modes and genres, product does. That's why we're now in a musical dark ages, everybody wants to fit.
~ Bill MacKechnie, Guitar Digest, volume 14 number 1 (Interview).

Music makes an altar out of our ears. A single struck tone, a note blown from a flute, can flush the body with goodness.
~ William Allaudin (W.A.) Mathieu, The Musical Life: Reflections on What It Is and How to Live It (1994).

The rules of music -- including counterpoint and harmony -- were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies.
~ William Allaudin (W.A.) Mathieu, Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony From Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression (1997).

When you are working out your own music, strip down what you hear to its vibrational essence. If you like it, keep it. If you want to change it, change it. If you want to throw it away, bye-bye. ... In this work you are the one who ultimately decides, not your teachers, not your culture, not the shadowy opinions of others. You must be devoted to what sounds good in your center.
~ William Allaudin (W.A.) Mathieu, The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music (1991).

You are made of music -- lonely music when you are lonely, vast music when you feel vast, even happy music sometimes. The whole stream of your life, already musical, is simply waiting for you to hear it.
~ William Allaudin (W.A.) Mathieu, The Musical Life: Reflections on What It Is and How to Live It (1994).

Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

Country music belongs to America.
~ Bill Monroe

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody. Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it.
~ Bill Monroe

Sae true his heart,
sae smooth his speech,
His breath like caller air;
His very foot has music in 't
As he comes up the stairs.
~ William Julius Mickle, in the Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser (1848). The Mariner's Wife

That heavenly music! what is it I hear?
The notes of the harpers ring sweet in mine ear.
And, see, soft unfolding those portals of gold,
The King all arrayed in his beauty behold!
~ William Augustus Muhlenberg, from I Would Not Live Alway: And Other Pieces In Verse (1859). I would not live alway

I dedicate this song
To all the girls I've loved before.
~ Willie Nelson

I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad.
~ Willie Nelson

I was influenced a lot by those around me -- there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields.
~ Willie Nelson

I'm a country songwriter and we write cry-in-your-beer songs. That's what we do. Something that you can slow dance to.
~ Willie Nelson

The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again.
~ Willie Nelson

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Only sick music makes money today.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Smooth ice
is paradise
for those who dance with expertise.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882). Prelude in German Rhymes (Joke, Cunning and Revenge)

What I really want from music. That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October. That it be individual, frolicsome, tender, a sweet small woman full of beastliness and charm.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1888). Maxims and Missiles

I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
~ (Edgar Wilson) "Bill" Nye, in Mark Twain Autobiography (1924)

I didn't set out to be a Producer. Unfortunately, I can't sing and I lack the necessary attributes to be a popstar. So, production found me.
~ William Orbit, BBC interview (November 1998). What do I do now?

I don't read music or anything like that, but I just find this kind of work to be so therapeutic and satisfying. I do it for fun.
~ William Orbit, Rolling Stone interview (August/September 1999).

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
~ Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, from Music and Moonlight: Poems and Songs (1874). Ode

If I'm in Vegas tomorrow, and on the corner the next day, I'm still the same person. The show that I gave in Vegas will be the same show I give in a small club. I want to reach everybody with my music.
~ Billy Paul, PhillySounds.com (1997). Billy Paul Biography

Those early days on the road with hotdogs and the bus that breaks down, playing the clubs where the promoter run away with the money. We called that the chitlin circuit days.
~ Wilson Pickett, The Edmonton Sun (11 August 2000). 'Wicked Pickett' is a new man

[W]e never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), from The Trimmed Lamp, and Other Stories of the Four Million (1907). The Pendulum

I've got a song I ain't got no melody
How'm I gonna sing it with my friends.
~ William Everett ("Billy") Preston, Will It Go Round In Circles (1973 single).

You must certainly follow the rules of tango. Follow the technique you learn and follow the man's lead, but try to move like yourself. The form of movement should be absolutely personal with it's own dynamics and its own expression. It is also important for a woman learning tango to learn to perceive the man -- to be able to follow him in every way: in each pause, in each breathe. Let yourself be led, and let yourself be filled with the music to be able to interpret it.
~ Guillermina Quiroga

Ukulele: a so-called musical instrument which, when listened to, you cannot tell whether one is playing on it or just monkeying with it.
~ Will Rogers

It's no longer possible to play jazz or classical music only. You need to know lots of procedures and techniques. It's no longer enough to be kind of talented. You can't coast along.
~ William Joseph "Bill" Russo, (1979).

The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too.
~ William Saroyan, Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961).

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
~ William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593).

Come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I. Act III, scene iii

Except I be by Sylvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act II, scene v

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act V, scene i

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act II, scene v

I had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

If music be the food of love, play on. ...
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act I, scene i

Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Music do I hear?
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act V, scene v

Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act II, scene i

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act V, scene i

The rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~ William Shakespeare, King John

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

In the world that we inhabit, having one hit is a lot better than having no hits.
~ William Shatner (on his new VH1 documentary show, "One Hit Wonders"), The Associated Press (26 July 2002). Shatner Praises One-Hit Wonders

As long as they can wheel me up to the piano, with the help of the good Lord, I'll play ...
~ Willie "The Lion" Smith

I used to hear my mother play a hymn ... and I used to take it and play it in ragtime, we called it then. Some folks called it "gut bucket." Some folks called it "in the alley," some folks called it "lowdown," as you feel it ...
~ Willie "The Lion" Smith

Ragtime means a guy that don't know the keyboard. He just rags off a few riffles that come to him. Now the difference between a ragtime pianist and a pianist is that a pianist is supposed to know all the progressions, how to move around in both hands.
~ Willie "The Lion" Smith

I may seem secure. I could have it made ...
You might think you see a lucky man who made the grade.
Nobody knows what dreams I see ...
Ain't nobody really sure just who they wanna be.
~ Billy Squier, in Don't Say No (1981 album). Nobody Knows

Jazz is like pure mountain air that regenerates the soul of man.
~ Dr. Billy Taylor

My singing comes with experience. I never had no one teach me nothing. I taught myself to sing and to blow the harmonica and even to play drums, by watching other people.
~ Willie Mae ("Big Mama") Thornton

Lord, play that barber shop chord, That soothing harmony, it makes an awful, awful hit with me.
~ William Tracey, Play That Barber Shop Chord (c. 1910 song)

The Grateful Dead are a creative group. Every measure is like a new trip downcourt. The players are the same, but the game/show is always different. It's never repetitive, it's never boring. The speed, creativity, timing, positioning and fluidity of both basketball and the Grateful Dead make them interchangeable components of my life.
~ William (Bill) Theodore Walton, III, Nothing But Net: Just Give Me the Ball and Get Out of My Way (February 1994).

Jazz was considered the work of the devil and, as a matter of fact, there's nothing new about that, they wouldn't allow instruments in the chapel when they first started, because instruments were the work of the devil. ... So the basic thing we had was singing, and what did we sing? We sang those things that came out, that helped us as a race, cope with slavery, and cope with inequities, whatever was going to give hope, to give understanding. And that's basically why Spirituals came about.
~ William Caesar Warfield (in a roundtable discussion at Texas Southern University on Jan. 19), The American Almanac (March 2001). A Dialogue on the African-American Spiritual: With William Warfield and Sylvia Olden Lee

Empires dissolve and peoples disappear,
Song passes not away.
~ William Watson, from Lacrymae Musarum And Other Poems (1892). Lacrymae Musarum

Slight not the songsmith.
~ William Watson, from Lacrymae Musarum And Other Poems (1892). England My Mother. st. iv

Song's breath is wasted when it does but fan
The smouldering infelicity of man.
~ William Watson, from Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature (1884). XCIL

You have Van Gogh's ear for music.
~ Billy Wilder

I remember just being attracted to the music. When I had the opportunity to pick up a guitar, it was like it was inside of me. It was a challenge to learn how to play it. I didn't want to stop.
~ Bernie Williams, in The New York Times (13 July 2003). Releasing Album, Williams Makes His Dream Real

Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.
~ Dar Williams, Razor & Tie Entertainment (2001)

My daddy, he was somewhere between God and John Wayne.
~ Hank Williams, Jr.

You can do anything that you wanna do, but uh-uh, don't step on my cowboy boots.
~ Hank Williams, Jr.

A song ain't nothin' in the world but a story just wrote with music to it.
~ Hank Williams, Sr.

A good song is a good song. And if I'm lucky enough to write it, well! ... I get more kick out of writing than I do singing.
~ Hank Williams, Sr.

I don't know what you mean by country music. I just make music the way I know how.
~ Hank Williams, Sr.

I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I starting singin' like myself.
~ Hank Williams, Sr., quoted in Criswell Freeman The Book of Country Music Wisdom (1994).

You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.
~ Hank Williams, Sr.

Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself.
~ Larry Williams, quoted in The Noise magazine, #225 (2002).

I play all styles, everybody should.
~ Mary Lou Williams, (1978 interview).

It was my pleasure to bring you the history of jazz. You may not realize this, but you're lucky. On the other hand, to bring this history to you, I had to go through muck and mud.
~ Mary Lou Williams, The History of Jazz (1970).

The music has healing powers in it. Everything about you is in it, hearing the sound and all that, and people have forgotten to listen to it as conversation. If you listen to it, you'll find that it tells a story.
~ Mary Lou Williams, quoted in David D. Spitzer Jazz Photographs

There's so much more to black life and culture than the materialistic portion that seems to consume all the lyrical content on the radio. I want to offer our difference and perspective, and I promise we're gonna make people move and feel R&B again.
~ Pharrell Williams, in Sonicnet.com Music News of the World Neptunes' Pharrell Williams Rethinks R&B (25 September 2001)

Away, then, with good taste! Good taste is the heritage of critics, and a good critic is, proverbially, a bad composer. What we want in England is real music, even if it be only a music-hall song. Provided it possess real feeling and real life, it will be worth all off-scourings of the classics in the world.
~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, in The Vocalist (May 1902). Good Taste

[I]n the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.
~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, quoted in The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1982).

No, it's a Bb. It looks wrong and it sounds wrong, but it's right.
~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, (of a certain note in his Fourth Symphony)

I don't want to mess up my songs. If I didn't end my songs with commercials, I wouldn't know what to say.
~ Wesley Willis, The Washington Post (24 November 2000). Songs in His Head

I'm going to rock the jam session just like Mudbone. I'm gonna do it well like engine, engine number nine, like the train going down the line.
~ Wesley Willis, in Entertainment Weekly (3 May 1996). Guided by Voices

I've been playing music for a long time. I play my music to keep busy. I play my music to keep out of trouble. I play my music to be a good person. My music keeps me from doing bad things. It keeps me from hurting other people and going to prison. I play my music to keep my mind off my demons.
~ Wesley Willis, Choler Magazine (Interview; 1 September 2000). Hell Ride on the Wesley Express

They like my music because I rock.
~ Wesley Willis, The Washington Post (24 November 2000). Songs in His Head

Barbershop quartet singing is four guys tasting the holy essence of four individual mechanisms coming into complete agreement.
~ (Robert) Meredith Willson

California girl and Surfer girl are my favourites. ... Because they mean a lot to me. They're like anthems for us.
~ Brian Wilson (on his favorite "Beach Boys" songs), Scotland Today (1 February 2002). Brian Wilson Interview

For me, making music has always been a very spiritual thing, and I think anybody who produces records has to feel that, at least a little bit. Producing a record ... the idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio ... well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.
~ Brian Wilson, in Inside Tracks: A First-Hand History of Popular Music from the World's Greatest Record Producers and Engineers (1999). Foreward

My mother used to tell me about vibrations. To think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death.
~ Brian Wilson

To be a great producer, music has to be a big part of your soul. And when it comes to making music, if I could invent a way to get it from my heart into yours, without doing all that hard work, I would be very happy.
~ Brian Wilson, in Inside Tracks: A First-Hand History of Popular Music from the World's Greatest Record Producers and Engineers (1999). Foreward

You know Chuck, Buddy, and Elvis paved the road. The roots are deep inside us, it's the rhythm in our soul.
~ Brian Wilson

What fairy-like music steals over the sea,
Entrancing our senses with charmed melody?
~ Mrs. C.B. Wilson, What Fairy-like Music

Music was our connection -- our easiest connection -- and it still is. We have painful connections, too. But music is our most natural. We can't explain it. It's just there.
~ Carnie Wilson (on her childhood, as daughter of Beach Boy legend Brian Wilson), Hay House, Inc. "Gut Feelings" (2001). Songs, Sex, and Smoke

I've been singing since I was 5 years old. Not in-the-church-thing kind of way. I always made up music. Since I was a little girl. Improvisation was with me from the beginning. It drove my parents crazy. I would sing all the time. To anything. Television show themes. I loved to imitate the sounds.
~ Cassandra Wilson, The Los Angeles Times (25 January 2003). From the heart, not the genre

These days, everybody wants to be a star. What we wanted was the music. People are getting involved these days for money and fame. In 1959, there was no money or fame -- you were doing it for the music.
~ Mary Wilson, in Venus Magazine (Vol. 6 No. 3). The Mary Wilson Interview: She's No Plain Old Mary

I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel.
~ Bill Withers

He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems of Sentiment and Reflection (1800). A Poet's Epitaph (1799)

I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.
~ William Wordsworth, from Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803). VIII. The Solitary Reaper

Sweetest melodies
Are those that are by distance made more sweet.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume II (1807). Personal Talk. Stanza 2

The moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, Vol. 2 (1800). Hart-Leap Well. Part ii

Where music dwells
Lingering -- and wandering on as loth to die.
~ William Wordsworth, from Ecclesiastical Sonnets. In Series (1821-22). Part III. XLIII: Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

The Rolling Stones' recorded legacy is unfortunately similar to that of many other rock stars of the 1960s -- a great burst of creativity that tapers off into a stretch (eventually decades long) of unremarkable (and sometimes downright awful) recorded work.
~ Bill Wyman, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (25 October 2002).

It's just good time music for the reason we all first started playing. We didn't think about fame and fortune and money and stuff. We thought about playing music we loved and hoping that other people might enjoy it too. And if they didn't, too bad.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks) (on his album "Anyway the Wind Blows"), in The Ottawa Sun (21 February 1999). Wyman keeps Rolling along

So I think that's why they don't stop, because they've got nothing more interesting to do. And that's not an insult, I think that's a fact.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks) (on The Rolling Stones wanting to tour after 37 years), in The Toronto Sun (17 February 1999). Ex-Stone rolls to own drummer

That's why many talented young people don't have a chance. The Rolling Stones would be too different today. They were different then but in those days the record companies and the media were open to new ideas. ... Now it's completely closed to only two or three kinds of music. And if you don't play those you don't get signed by a record company and you are not played on the radio. So, the Rolling Stones would never make it now.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks), Reuters (13 November 2002). Rolling Stones Would Have No Chance Today -- Wyman

We always had a kind of dangerous ... wobbly kind of rhythm which was very infectious. It sounded like it could collapse any minute. And it never did. That was the magic of the Stones. I think that's gone now.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks), in The Edmonton Sun (30 April 1998). Wyman? Why not, man!

When I played with the Stones I was playing the same songs for 25 years, and I knew if I stayed another 10 years I'd still be playing the same songs 10 years later. That's the way of the pop world.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks), in The Toronto Sun (8 September 2001). Bill Wyman touring with new band

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Tower (1928). Among School Children

Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet
That there be no foot silent in the room
Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet ...
~ William Butler Yeats, from Responsibilities (1914). The Mountain Tomb