Singing Quotes - page 63
An unexpected vision appeared to me. A circle not unlike a wreath woven from rainbow and lightnings, whirled from heaven to earth with a stupendous, velocity, blinding me by its brilliance. And amidst this light and fire I heard music and soft singing, thunderclaps and the roar of a tempest, the rumble of falling mountains and earthquakes.
The circle whirled with a terrifying noise, touching the sun and the earth, and, in the centre of it I saw the naked, dancing figure of a beautiful young woman, enveloped by a light, transparent scarf, in her hand she held a magic wand.
Presently the four apocalyptical beasts began to appear on the edges of the circle; one with the face of a lion, another with the face of a man, the third, of an eagle and the fourth, of a bull.
P. D. Ouspensky
"Another white man's trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting!” cried Crazy Horse. He stopped and tried to free himself and draw his knife, but both arms were held fast by Little Big Man and the officer. While he struggled thus, a soldier thrust him through with his bayonet from behind. The wound was mortal, and he died in the course of that night, his old father singing the death song over him and afterward carrying away the body, which they said must not be further polluted by the touch of a white man. They hid it somewhere in the Bad Lands, his resting place to this day.
Crazy Horse
To us it does not seem that long ago, possibly because our children hear stories told around the fire of things which happened fifteen centuries back. Such stories carry an immediacy one does not get from books....”
"Which is why some countries carry such old grudges,” offered Marianne. "What children learn at their grandmas' knees they act upon as though it happened yesterday.”
He nodded gravely, even sadly. "Perhaps that is true. Those who have an oral tradition full of old wrongs and old revenge do seem to fight the same battles forever. If the Irish were not forever singing of their ancient wrongs-or writing poetry about it...well, we see the result in every morning's newspapers.
Sheri S. Tepper
Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream - who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. ... Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.
Claude Debussy
Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means if you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.
Patrick Rothfuss
I believe that I became a poet, a writer, when I was transcribing my grandma's songs in Mexico. I was about 15 years old. And my grandma used to sing with the mandolin a beautiful song that she used to play, and I thought at that point that she was basically singing from the old tradition of Mexico. But then I became aware that those were her own songs, but she had never written down the songs herself. So I decided to then transcribe the songs, and I would listen to her, and then write down the songs. They were very beautiful songs, in the Hispanic tradition of Guatecos and the ballads and so forth.
Francisco X. Alarcón
Even if it ain't sunny, hey, I ain't complaining I'm in the rain doing a buck 40, hydroplaning, what, shorty? (Where you disappear to, son?) Maintaining Putting myself in a position most of these rappers ain't in I'm living, the ill street blues got you hunger painin' Nothing to gain and a whole lot to lose, you still singing, fool I'm thorough, in every borough, my name be ringing.
Jay-Z
When the conductor Richard Hickox rang me one day in 1984 to ask if I could help with a rather unusual job for which he and his choir had been engaged, I was intrigued. Kate Bush, it transpired, was working on her new album, Hounds of Love, and for one track, Hello Earth, she wanted a chorus to recreate the orthodox singing/chanting that made such a contribution to the film Nosferatu.
Kate Bush
She can turn anything into gold with that voice, here's the thing: if you speak to a good singing teacher about great opera singers, they will talk about consistency of tone. Or there's a book by Alfred Tomatis about why some people like certain people's voices and other people hate them, like Bob Dylan or me or whoever, some people say, 'Oh, I hate that voice', so there's a thing about people's frequency responses, what they are pleased by. Rihanna has this thick tone, so it's very hard to annoy anybody.
Chris Martin
I do not seek to copy nature. I, on the contrary, create to divert me such faith and dreams as living among men would tend to destroy. But as it is, my worshipers depart from me heartedly, in this grey corridor, and they are devoid of fear and parvanimity; for the effect of my singing, like that of all great singing, is to fill my hearers with a sentiment of their importance as moral beings and the greatness of their destinies.
James Branch Cabell
I don't necessarily do music for the pure art sake of my own self-expression, which is why a lot of people make music-to express themselves. I really feel that the work I do, be it writing, singing or producing, I do in order to help communicate feelings to other people, hoping they might feel the same things, that they somehow relate to it or get an experience from it that they can share with themselves.
Dan Hartman
I was in my room listening on headphones on a tape recorder. It's very intimate. It's like talking to somebody on the phone, like talking to John Lennon on the phone. I'm not exaggerating to say that. This music changed the shape of the room. It changed the shape of the world outside the room; the way you looked out the window and what you were looking at.
I remember John singing "Oh My Love." It's like a little hymn. It's certainly a prayer of some kind - even if he was an atheist. "Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes can see/I see the wind/Oh, I see the trees/Everything is clear in our world." For me it was like he was talking about the veil lifting off, the scales falling from the eyes. Seeing out the window with a new clarity that love brings you. I remember that feeling.
Yoko came up to me when I was in my twenties, and she put her hand on me and she said, "You are John's son." What an amazing compliment!
Bono
While the Lord was going, chanting and dancing, thousands of people were following Him and some of them were crying, some were laughing, some were dancing, and some singing. Some of them were falling on the ground, offering obeisances to the Lord. And all of them were roaring with the holy name of Krishna, Krishna.... The Lord was dancing, raising His two hands, and roaring with the words, "Haribol! Haribol!”.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
