Kurt Elling Quotes

I just like music all the way around the board. I can't stick to one thing - I've got to move around.

The less people that are on the stage, there's more drama. You start living the music with each individual. When you see a band with ten people on stage, just a huge ensemble, you don't know who's doing what.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

I don't want to be stuck to any specific genre.

I personally don't lock in a performance, because I do leave room for things to happen, so I just make sure I'm very intimate with what I'm saying and why I'm saying it so that no matter what happens, we can do whatever we want to do and leave space for play.

Normally, when I write the setlist for a Dream Theater show, I'll change it up every night, and we can basically play whatever we want.

Kid's, Life's too short to be organized. Follow your dreams first, then organize later.

If you’re constantly open to inspiration, it will come to you. The worst thing a man can do is pressure himself into an idea.

I love music. I'd love to go on Broadway and do a musical there. I just like to kind of go with whatever's inspiring at the moment, and kind of follow that as far as I can.

Life doesn't have to be so planned. Just roll with it and let it happen.

What is life unless you're having a good time? I don't really have a plan; I just try to dip my toes in different ponds.

I like to let each thing happen - direct it a little consciously, maybe - but just kind of follow the vibrations I get in each particular circumstance. We don't plan theatrics. We hardly ever know which set we'll play.

It's fun to be loose. Just like on stage, all of your great ideas come from looseness.

I think if you're open-minded, the road will take you where it takes you. If you're closed, you might not get to go where the road is heading.

I don't really like to know what I'm going to do before I do it.

I probably have the most fun on projects where there's some room to improvise.

I try to preload as little as I can. I like to come to the set with minimal preparation.

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them

I believe that in public worship we should do well to be bound by no human rules, and constrained by no stereotyped order.

What I like is a life that is full of surprises and [that has] no routine.

I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen.

Life's too short to be organized.

In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.

I'll never make any resolutions. Drop all resolutions! Let life be a natural spontaneity. The only golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

I try not to be a prisoner to those kinds of thoughts or ideas of what I think my life should be or shouldn't be. That's why I've never had a five-year plan. I always knew that I wanted to have children. It wasn't kind of something that I discovered later. I also never felt the biological clock ticking because I think I always knew that I wanted to adopt.