Don McLean Quotes

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

I soon gave up instruction for self-teaching.

I learned to read music before I learned to read script.

A lot of times I wish I would have learned to read music, but I'm very impatient.

Reading music has opened up me up so much. I've been experimenting for so long and trying to make sense of things just from my ears. It takes forever. Now I can get where I want much quicker.

I think a lot of people have grown up with the idea that they can't learn things themselves. They think they need an institution to provide them with knowledge and teach them how to do things. I couldn't disagree more.

I definitely learned to communicate with other musicians better. I used to feel so intimidated by guys who can read notes, like, 'Oh my God, they're gonna think I'm not even gonna be able to sit at the table.' But I've come to see that a lot of these musicians don't know how to read music either, and that made me feel good.

I was mostly self-taught on guitar and that had its benefits. It's a great thing to work through problems on your own.

Most of the best songwriters that ever lived couldn't read music.

I could read music before I could read words.

I self-taught myself music at 19-20.

My parents would say to me, 'You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you.' That was the whole ethos of my family.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.

I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs.

By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.

I studied piano from the age of three. My grandmother taught piano. I stayed at her house during the day while my parents worked. I obviously wanted to learn to play. And so she asked if she could teach me, and my mother said don't you think she's too young. My grandmother apparently said no. So I could read music before I could read, and I really don't remember learning to read music. So for me it's like a native language. When I look at a sheet of music, it just makes sense.

They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.

Free curiosity is of more value in learning than harsh discipline.

I am basically a pretty good autodidact. I can teach myself things.

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.

Even when I read a book, if the book leaves me the possibility of finding certain solutions or working on my own toward a solution, I prefer that much more than if the book fills me with the answers, gives them to me directly.

Don't read a book and be a follower; read a book and be a student.

I think self-education is the greatest and best thing you could ever make.

I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.