Top 655 Musician Quotes

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He’s aware of where he is and what he’s doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

You’re a musician: You play. That’s what you do.

As a musician, you just want to be able to do what you love.

I never sought out a record deal. It caught me with my pants down. I was just a musician doing my thing, I didn’t even send my records out.

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they’re really mean to each other about who makes what.

I think the true artist – musician, dancer, writer, actor – a true artist is able to sort of articulate pain and tragedy, in a way that sort of expresses what the listener or the beholder may have been feeling but was less able to communicate.

I don’t have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love.

When I grew up, the thing boys would do during the summer is work tobacco because it was a cheap product back then. I didn’t want to do that. From an early, early, early age, I was like, ‘I like music. This performing thing comes easy.’ And perhaps that’s how I ended up doing what I’m doing today. Being a musician.

One of the hardest things about being a musician is finishing a project and then having to wait three or six months to publish it and to do all the sort of promotional behaviour.

I don’t claim to be a musician, I didn’t go to Julliard.

I became a musician so I wouldn’t have to get up at 6 in the morning.

My parents had a pub and each Sunday there was an accordionist. They have told me that when I was in my cradle, I already was imitating the gestures of the musician.

I wasn’t making music consciously when I was younger. I was a musician, but that has its own stigmas. Anywhere on the planet, it’s one of the more undervalued positions.

I think a politician would be very, very cool to play. Or an American musician of some sort, or like an American pioneer like the Dohenys or the Rockefellers or something.

My friend Kate St John is not only a brilliant musician and beautiful person, but also an excellent White Goods Adviser.

Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually – years of searching – found this guy, Dan Franklin. He’s an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together… It’s been a really cool experience.

David Bowie’s my favorite musician. I love him above all, but I’m really into rap a lot right now.

I have always felt I was more accurately a Hard Rock musician.

Every generation of rock musician will understand that we wouldn’t be anywhere without the support of teenagers buying the records.

I don’t consider myself a musician. I’m an artist.

I’ve always felt that I would rather see an actor, writer, or musician’s work, rather than actually know the person. If you know too much about an artist, it somehow lessens their ability to do their work as well.

Poetry itself is music. I’m just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. All of his poems are all like songs, and that’s how I always try to start my thoughts.

As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.

Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.

I am not, and have no interest in being, a musician of any kind.

I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer.

I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music.

He wasn’t a great father. He was a great musician. That’s always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don’t know if there is one.

Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.

I can’t think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

So I don’t think of myself as just a musician at all, I think of myself as an artist.

Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.

The Fela Kuti Queens – the band members and wives of the late African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti – are my fashion icons.

I like to entertain people according to what they’re saying entertains them. As an artist, musician, songwriter and producer, I sit back and hear it, and… if that’s what y’all like, I can do that.

I’m not trying to save the world. As a musician and artist, it just ain’t me.

We all shared an admiration of Debussy both as a musician and as sort of an icon for the 20th century. It seemed like an interesting idea to go right back 100 years to find the source of some new ideas now.

I’m a completely fearless musician.

I knew that I was going to have a life as a musician, because I always felt the pull. I don’t remember ever having to make a choice.

I’m a church musician. I play gospel music; that’s what I do. I never had a chance to produce gospel music, and I did a full album with Lecrae that’s the number one Christian album. It’s super-big for me.

My dad was a musician and I traveled around with him, so it was something that I knew.

I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet. I cannot make fine artistic phrases that cast light and shadow, for I am no painter. I can neither by signs nor by pantomime express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer; but I can by tones, for I am a musician.

Music will always be there. I own a piano. I have it in my apartment. I play it every day, and I have a lot of musician friends who I play with.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

I’ve always just adored music. It’s my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can’t do that if you’re a musician.

My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house – he’s nine years older than me.

My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist – a painter, a decorative painter.

‘Master Blaster,’ by Stevie Wonder, is up-tempo and fun, like Stevie himself. Stevie’s always making jokes; he really knows how to put people at ease. He’s one of my inspirations, as a musician and a person.

The sexiest woman musician is Alicia Keys.

When I was 21 or 22, I realized I was never going to be something else – I had to be a musician. I can’t commit to anything unless I love it.

The most ironic thing is my grandfather has his masters in music composition; he was a jazz composer. My dad was a musician, too. He played more, like, soul music.

Because fashion essentially is art, and as an artist and someone who is also a musician and an artist in regards to drawing and painting, anything I can do that expresses my feelings is something I’m really drawn to.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of everything – I fell in love with music, when I discovered people like Lauryn Hill and Tracy Chapman, people whose voices I could really feel, people with a lot of soul. That’s what I’m drawn to as a musician: Anybody that has their own voice and their own point of view.

I’ve dated the sweet mama’s boy, the musician rocker, the struggling artist – basically a lot of people without jobs.

There’s more to being a musician than just making music.

A musician is a professional, whether he or she is successful or not. The profession itself must be regarded as a stable job.

As a composer and as a musician I’m a true believer – and this is not to be overly diplomatic – I’m a believer that there’s artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There’s art in absolutely everything.

Originally I studied as a musician, a classical pianist. That was my career before I took up acting in my late 20s.

The fountain of youth with the youthful young musician is one meaning, and the fountain of youth with the youthful energy of the leader is another meaning.

When I am on stage, I am just an honest artiste who tries to let people know me, not only as a musician, but also as a person.

One of my really good friends in New York is a musician and looks just like Lindsay Buckingham. We always fancied ourselves the nice Fleetwood Mac.