Ali Smith Quotes

Sometimes people talk about music, whether blogs or magazines, in a strange way where it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to it.

The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens.

The level on which Japan seems to have picked up on my music seems to be on a more abstract level.

In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.

Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music.

Music is subjective to everyone's unique experience.

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

The music speaks for itself. You either like it or you don't, or you're somewhere in between. That doesn't change whether I'm in the band or not.

I started understanding William Blake and George Orwell more and more. It's amazing how we go to school when we're so young, read all of these books, just trying to memorize them. When you start to live, you don't have to memorize anything.

Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.

It's better for the listener to interpret their own meanings to the music.

Music, of almost any kind, always made sense to me.

Some people just can't get over their own hang-ups to listen to my music.

I knew all this Beatles music. I knew the songs phonetically. It was like my whole experience of that music was out of focus, and somebody put the perfect glasses on me, and all of a sudden I could see everything.

Someone who knows only music, understands nothing about it.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

The way the mind decodes music is an individual mystery. But the physical circumstances can change the way you listen.

We're also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

I abhor the words 'classical music.' Few things satisfy me more than a really good cover version.

Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'

He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?

Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.