Nadia Boulanger Quotes

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

Yes, but don't forget I also have the luxury of the worlds finest band when it gets lonely.

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world.

I try to make sure that I make music that can stand the test of time.

I don't really need to be remembered. I hope the music's remembered.

And woven into the fabric of this harsh existence was music.

I am left alone in the wide world. My own dear family I have buried: one in Rangoon, and two in Amherst. What remains for me but to hold myself in readiness to follow the dear departed to that blessed world, 'Where my best friends, my kindred dwell, where God, my Saviour, reigns.'

I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.

There are so many things to be worried about, and I wanted to make a record that people could put on, and it would lift them up the way the sun did for me each day.

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

Soul music is about longevity and reaching and touching people on a human level - and that's never going to get lost.

As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.

I'll probably be 80 years old and still performing. Music is like fashion, it changes. But some things will always be the same.

I keep coming back because I have no place else to go. What else would I do? I love to sing.

That's the thing about music: It's forever. Hopefully, you captured a moment musically that has a timeless quality people will find relevant to their lives at any point. That's the whole idea about what I love about art and music.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known.

People say I look younger than the music I'm doing just because the songs are older. Hopefully I can keep my youthful look!

I don't need to have my convictions confirmed by a show of numbers. However, being among people in front of a band leads me to believe that all is not lost, that humans, now and then, can communicate on a higher level than the political and the practical.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

Music will bring you through... It brought me through.

We all have our things that we go through, and I wanted to be an artist that people could listen to and feel like they're not alone. I want to be empowering.

When I'm going through something really difficult, I think it's what made me go to the piano for the first time when I was a child. I look at it as a place to pray.