All Quotes

"I adore extravagance but I abhor waste."

"I don't compose. I assemble materials."

"Somehow, suddenly, a musical idea occurs to you; either a whole phrase, or three notes, or a series of chords, something that seems pregnant with possibilities for development. Once you have the kinds of ideas that fascinate you, you're no longer in a position to decide the nature of the animal. It's going to take its essence from the musical ideas that occur to you....Some musical ideas are too short, they don't seem long enough to carry you through ten minutes of music, so you have to start searching about for other ideas; contrasting ones that seem to fit with the original ones."

"So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it."

"If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles."

"Nadia Boulanger was quite aware that as a composition teacher she labored under two further disadvantages: she was not herself a regularly practicing composer and in so far as she composed at all she must of necessity be listed in that unenviable category of the woman composer. Everyone knows that the high achievement of women musicians as vocalists and instrumentalists has no counterpart in the field of musical composition. This historically poor showing has puzzled more than one observer. ... Is it possible that there is a mysterious element in the nature of musical creativity that runs counter to the nature of the feminine mind? ... The future may very well have a different tale to tell; for the present, however, no woman's name will be found on the list of world-famous composers."

"For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it -- even of my own music -- with the same nuances forever."

"I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience."

"Performance has remained the ideal locus of rock authenticity long after it has ceased to be the real origin of rock music."

"I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights."

"One day I'm gonna lose the war."

"I can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it. I can't imagine what would happen to literature today if one were obliged to congregate in an unpleasant hall and read novels projected on a screen."

"We have all been affected as composers, as teachers, as musicians by recordings to an extent that cannot possibly be calculated as yet or predicted for the future. The music which is being most widely disseminated and most widely discussed, and therefore most widely imitated and influential, is that music which is available on records. The music that is only published is very little known. I don't think one can possibly exaggerate the extent to which the climate of music today is determined by the fact that the total Webern is available on records, that the total Schoenberg is becoming available."

"For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it -- even of my own music -- with the same nuances forever."

"I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience."

"If the listener does eventually come to the point where he makes the ultimate performance by splicing tapes from other musicians' recordings, he [sic] will eventually become just as bored with it as with other recordings, for it will still always be the same. Look, for instance, at electronic music. The boys are already becoming bored with what they do because they put it irrevocably on tape. The best indication of this is that more and more they are mixing the live performance element with their tapes."

"My experience of the original Edison phonograph goes back to the period when it was first introduced into this country. In fact, I have good reason to believe that I was among the very first persons in London to make a vocal record, though I never received a copy of it, and if I did it got lost long ago. It must have been in 1881 or 1882, and the place where the deed was done was on the first floor of a shop in Hatton Garden, where I had been invited to listen to the wonderful new invention. To begin with, I heard pieces both in song and speech produced by the friction of a needle against a revolving cylinder, or spool, fixed in what looked like a musical box. It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."

"People have a good reason for saying that because the Japanese have been smart. They have visited Jamaica and they bought maybe 90 per cent of our vinyl collection and that vault is now in Japan. I talking classic vinyl that your grand parents used to collect. The Japanese came here and they knocked door to door and bought out the vinyl records...so most of our catalogue is in Japan."

"We did not see the value in vinyl, and so we were quick to sell them to the Japanese, and now they have all the gold."

"So let the lovin' take a hold over me let the lovin' take a hold over me (follow me, Long Beach posse) 'cause all I see is your fussin' and fightin' 1992, let us all start uniting put your heads together be the best you can be let this jam take us to 1993 stay positive, the love will come back to me."

"Life is one big question when you're staring at the clock and the answer's always waiting at the liquor store: 40 ounces to freedom, so I'll take that walk."

"40 ounces to freedom is the only chance I have to feel good, even though I feel bad."

"I smoke two joints in the morning I smoke two joints at night I smoke two joints in the afternoon it makes me feel alright. I smoke two joints in times of peace and two in time of war. I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, and then I smoke two more."

"If I had a shotgun, you know what I'd do? I'd point that shit straight at the sky and shoot heaven on down for you."

"When you grab a hold of me, Tell me that ill never be set free"

"Tell me, are you a bad fish too?"

"I don't gamble, but I bet I'm gonna die if I don't get a cigarette."

"The stone that the builder refuse shall be the head cornerstone."

"I'm not a fool to hurt myself, but I was innocent to what they done to me"

"It's a crazy world to live alone, a ball and chain I call my own."

"When the music hits you shall feel no pain"

"Oh well the bars are always open, and the time is always right. And if God's good word goes unspoken, the music goes all night."

"If rhymes were valiums I'd be comfortably numb"

"Still I got my yellow cat and my wooden baseball bat and my shiny silver gat and if my homies got my back then I got all that I need. Look at all the love we've found."

"Lovin' is what I got now remember that."

"Life's too short so love the one you got 'cuz you might get run over or you might get shot."

"I don't cry when my dog runs away I don't get angry at the bills I have to pay I don't get angry when my mom smokes pot, hits that bottle and goes right to the rock."

"I don't practice Santeria, I ain't got no crystal ball well, I had a million dollars but I, I spent it all."

"Caress me down, that's the loving sound"

"Hola, mucho gusto. Me llamo Bradley I am hornier than Ron Jeremy"

"Summertime and the livin's easy"

"Me and my girl, we got this relationship I love her so bad but she treats me like shit"

"Take this veil from off my eyes My burning sun will someday rise"

"Evil, I've come to tell you that she's evil Most definitely."

"Embla lies with each thing, Ask looks and knows. Understanding without explanation they depart and separate."

"On the ice flow they grip, cut, twist, break open seeds throwing out the white salt, revive volcanic dreams: unable to satisfy their diminuated lust the allegoric flesh learns the thrill of return."

"When God comes at me do I bow the stallion's legs or meet him with flared nostrils?"

"When Man comes at me do I rein in the stallion, or let him meet the hooves?"

"When Woman comes at me do I let her take the bridle, or turn away the head?"

"When I and stallion blend the grass gets cropped."