Quotes by Singer-Songwriters - Page 2

You can do what's right, or you can do what you are told.
Phil Ochs
The most convincing and enduring foe of the global financial economy ultimately is the global financial economy itself. - Ulrich Beck
Richard Swift
You can get what you want or you can just get old.
Billy Joel
I threw bitter tears at the ocean, but all that came back was the tide.
Sarah McLachlan
The point is that everyone needs some exposure to the various ways of life. People buy things out of catalogues too much. They see in Time magazine that they're suppose to be feeling in such and such a way, and they dash off a check and buy that life-style sight unseen. A pig in a poke if there ever was one, for once you've bought the thing there's no refund. We ought to be able to try things before we sign up for them. Used to be you could listen to the records in a record store before you bought them. Now they're sealed, for your protection, they say. Bullshit! It's for their goddamned protection, not ours. We don't need to be protected. We need to be allowed to get a taste of something before we accept it.
Arthur Alexander
I cannot love, I want to be aloneI will not love, I want to be alone
Laura Marling
After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works.
Gwen Stefani
And it was darkSo dark at nightAnd we held on to each otherLike brother to brotherWe promised our mothers we'd writeAnd we would all go down together
Billy Joel
Where do you go when you're lonely?Where do you go when you're blue?Where do you go when you're lonely?I'll follow youWhen the stars go blue.
Ryan Adams
Chatty, defensive, observant. My new favorite witness.
Rob Thomas
Conan Doyle deluded a century of readers into thinking we're all deductive geniuses.
Rob Thomas
Take what you see on TV, mix in a guy who's turned 30 and still doesn't have a job, throw in some Uncle Remus stories and add a few flies in amber and you have America.
Michael Stipe
I've always been serious that way, trying to evolve to a more conscious state. Funny thing about that,though. You tweak yourself,looking for more love, less lust, more compassion, less jealousy. You keep tweaking, keep adjusting those knobs until you can no longer find the original settings. In some sense,the original settings are exactly what I'm looking for-a return to the easygoing guy i was before my world got complicated, the nice guy who took things as they came and laughed so hard the blues would blow away in the summer wind.
Bill Withers
Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.
Fabrizio de André
Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance.
Joanna Newsom
If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.
Billy Joel
Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone, it's where you go when're you're alone, its were you go to rest your bones. It's not just where you lay your head, it's not just where you make your bead. As long as we're together does it matter where we go?
Gabrielle Aplin
Home can be the Pennsylvania TurnpikeIndiana's early morning dewHigh up in the hills of CaliforniaHome is just another word for you
Billy Joel
Home is where my habits have a habitat
Fiona Apple
I was emotionally scarred we could not get it away
Corinne Bailey Rae
I know the police cause you troubleThey cause trouble everywhereBut when you die and go to heavenYou find no policeman there
Woody Guthrie
And I'm ill with the thought of your kiss, coffee-laced intoxicating on her lips... shut it out, I've got no claim on you now, I'm not allowed to wear you freedom down
A Fine Frenzy
So you're gone and i'm hauntedAnd i bet you are just fineDid i make it that easy to walkRight in and out of my life
A Fine Frenzy
i can not go through the ocean. i can not drive the streets at night. i can not wake up in the morning without you on my mind. and so your gone and im haunted i bet you are just fine. did i make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life.
A Fine Frenzy
I do so hate to be forced to be anything than other than what I am.
Laura Marling
But sometimes the lies we let ourselves believe are for our own good.
Rob Thomas
Well we're waiting here in Allentown,For the Pennsylvania we never found,For the promises our teachers gave,If we worked hard,If we behaved...So the graduations hang on the wall,But they never really helped us at all,No they never taught us what was real,Iron and coke,And chromium steel,And we're waiting here in Allentown...But they've taken all the coal from the ground,And the union people crawled away...
Billy Joel
[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.
Steve Grand
I took the sing from your song. I made a bed where you don't belong.
Ben Howard
Today we're younger than we're ever gonna be
Regina Spektor
All the broken hearts in the world still beat
Ingrid Michaelson
I cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do.
Jana Stanfield
Because life is short. I feel we’re made of a hunger, a desire for life – if that can be described as a material. As I get older, I’m trying to open that channel more. If you don’t, if you close off desire and get complacent, life loses its freshness and sweetness, and that’s what I crave. That’s my bliss.
Sarah Slean
I hate to be wrong. It makes me feel like a failure. Being wrong has the same affect on me as a lack of food or sleep. It lowers my entire mood. But, I need to be proved wrong sometimes, as it restores humility, and doesn't allow my ego to swell to stupidly big sizes.
Paul Kelly
Sometimes lightning struck twice; sometimes, one person got more than their share of suffering.
Rob Thomas
So remember those who win the gameLose the love they sought to gainIn debitures of quality and dubious integrityTheir small-town eyes will gape at youIn dull surprise when payment dueExceeds accounts received at seventeen
Janis Ian
In the sinking sand,where we’ve come to rest,have I had a hand in your loneliness?
Joanna Newsom
They're sharing a drink called loneliness, but at least its better than drinking alone.
Billy Joel
When I was a kid--10, 11, 12, 13--the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: "There's never gonna be a room someplace where there's a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, 'You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.' That'll never happen. There's nothing interesting about me." I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.
Fiona Apple
Did You wrap yourself inside the unexpected so we might know that Love would go that far?
Francesca Battistelli
Jesus was a good guy, he didn't need this shit.
John Prine
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here its like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could just come in I swear I'll leave. Won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.
Miranda Lambert
Well, my friends give me purple flowers and orange teaand goosedown spinning quilts and torquoise chairswe greet one another in a wild profusion of wordsand wave farewell amidst the wonderment of airIn the laughing times we know we are luckyIn the quiet times we know that we are blessedAnd we will not be alone
Dar Williams
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
Billy Joel
Strike a match, ignite my past.
Cady Groves
A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.
Alanis Morissette
Her strategy for honoring the dead had always been to take action - solve the mystery, punish the criminal. But what did you do when there was no one to punish? When there were no answers to find? How do you assimilate that kind of loss without losing your mind?
Rob Thomas
One way at a time I'll try to lend these broken hands of mine give my strength, be my light.
Joe Brooks
I don't want to give advice to a 19-year-old, because I want a 19-year-old to make mistakes and learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes.
Fiona Apple
No, I don't like you, I just thought you were cute enough to kiss you.
Frank Ocean
I've looked at life from both sides now From up and down and still somehowIt's life's illusions I recallI really don't know life at all
Joni Mitchell
Words - take her with youlet her rest in your rhymesWords - take her awaysomewhere beyond timeWords - ease her breathinglay her softly on the floorthere - let her lingerand listen like ever beforeLeave her windows uncovered at nightand fill her room with the citylightsas they illuminate the skyit reminds her of the people outsidecause she won't sleep unless she heals her lonelinessWalk with her beneath the treetopscreate new paths and memoriesshow her how the sunlightglances through the gaps between the leavesWords - help her change the worldin only one versetell her to reach for the starsand to always put love firstLeave her windows uncovered at nightand fill her rooms with the citylightsas they illuminate the skyit reminds her of the people outsideit reminds her of the peopleit reminds her of the peopleit reminds her of the people outside.
Ane Brun
Belief builds from scratch. Doesn’t have to relax, it doesn’t need space
Gavin DeGraw
And in the eveningAfter the fire and the lightOne thing is certain: Nothing can hold back the lightTime is relentlessAnd as the past disappearsWe're on the verge of all things new
Billy Joel
I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
Joanna Newsom
The heart of a woman will never be found in the arms of a man.
Vanessa Carlton
Please, let them be little,‘Cause they’re only that way for a while.Give them hope, give them praise,Give them love every day.Let ‘em cry, let ‘em giggle,Let ‘em sleep in the middle,Oh, but let them be little.
Billy Dean
The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.
Joanna Newsom
Decide that life is good and you are special. Decide to enjoy today. Decide that you will live life to the fullest now, no matter what. Trust that you will change what needs changing, but also decide that you're not going to put off enjoying life just because you don't have everything you want now. Steadfastly refuse to let anything steal your joy. Choose to be happy...and you will be.
Donna Fargo
For all our mutual experienceOur separate conclusions are the sameNow we are forced to recognize our inhumanityOur reason coexists with our insanityBut we choose between reality and madnessIt's either sadness or euphoria
Billy Joel