Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was good or not.

A song must move the story ahead. A song must take the place of dialogue. If a song halts the show, pushes it back, stalls it, the audience won't buy it; they'll be unhappy.

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.

The songwriter mustn't fall in love with his own song. If it doesn't belong, he can't push it into a show. Let him save it; maybe it'll fit in another show.

A songwriter should have friends who are similarly interested; should move about in the milieu of work he has chosen for himself.

A rhyme doesn't make a song.

Love is the reason you were born.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

A song just doesn't come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.

There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers.

We've accumulated a lot of things over the years and many things from our grandmother. Hopefully it'll be all right. I really don't want to cry, but I can't help it.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

In a show or a movie, one must work with many people. Many women just don't have the time for it.

The man in our society is the breadwinner; the woman has enough to do as the homemaker, wife and mother.

If you don't have a story that will hold the audience, you won't have a successful show.

I don't care how good a song is - if it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

I'm in the mood for love, simply because you're near me. Funny, but when you're near me I'm in the mood for love.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them, just to make the music more of a sanctuary.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

We used to listen to all the marvelous operas on records. Music was a very important part of our lives.

Drums just always sounded like the most fun part of that good music for me.

Record covers helped me discover a lot of music that I wasn't aware of.