Kate Chopin Quotes

If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it.

Anyway, I'm digressing, but this is just kind of this 10-and-a-half-minute, ambient - you hear cicadas and birds and the wind outside and crickets as I'm swelling the piece. I could never do that on a pop record. I could, but why would I want to be agitating?

I wanted to hear sounds of everyday objects - even musical instruments - as things.

We write the songs that we do because that's what we like. But they are just stories - not things we actually do or recommend anyone else go out and do.

My first impression when I heard 'Heaven' was, 'Do not let anyone else have that song! I'm putting it on hold.' I knew it was special from the first time I heard it, and I thought my fans would love it as much as I did.

Enya was a huge deal for me. That kind of woman vocals and how wide those productions were.

I want to soundtrack people's layered feelings.

I feel everything. I feel everything, so when you feel, you know you have emotions and everything. Music is a feeling. Music is energy, vibrations and sounds.

There's certain little sounds that I just like to hear.

We listen too much to the telephone and we listen too little to nature. The wind is one of my sounds. A lonely sound, perhaps, but soothing. Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for-sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive, or quiet and calm... As a matter of fact, one of the greatest sounds of them all-and to me it is a sound-is utter, complete silence.

There is nothing that overwhelms the senses quite like an unwelcome silence.

Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

There was an era when people would turn on their radio and hear a radio drama. Now, you could be as scared by that as seeing it filmed. In those days, people used to sit by the fire and imagine what they were hearing. Everything is its own art form.

Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music.

Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it.

There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.

Music is the noise that surrounds the stillness of the art form.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?

In Seattle we live among the trees and the waterways, and we feel we are rocked gently in the cradle of life. Our winters are not cold and our summers are not hot and we congratulate ourselves for choosing such a spectacular place to rest our heads.

All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it.

The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.