Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

All the best songs have an element of sadness.

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.

There's a longing in country music that can soften even the rockiest heart.

My songs have a layer of melancholy.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-Earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.

I have left my book, I have left my room, For I heard you singing Through the gloom.

People like music when they're in love, but they don't need it as much. You need music when you're missing someone or you're pining for someone or you're forgetting someone or you're trying to process what just happened.

Well the country songs themselves are three-chord stories, ballads which are mostly sad. If you are already feeling sorry for yourself when you listen to them they will take you to an even sadder place.

My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don't know why that is, but to me, that's country music.

Nostalgia can be extremely powerful in the right hands: think of the intense longing in the films Andrei Tarkovsky made after he left the U.S.S.R. They wring your soul.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Music breaks my heart constantly.

The only time I get a tear in my eye is when I think of what I can possibly miss.

For whatever reason, I've always gravitated towards music that feels nostalgic or longing or beautifully tragic.

I think all of the best songs are about heartbreak and love.

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

Music sweeps by me as a messenger - Carrying a message that is not for me

A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain.

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

All my life, Following Care along the dusty road, Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed.

When the railroad trains moaned, and river-winds blew, bringing echoes through the vale, it was as if a wild hum of voices, the dear voices of everybody he had known, were crying: "Peter, Peter! Where are you going, Peter?" And a big soft gust of rain came down. He put up the collar of his jacket, and bowed his head, and hurried along.