var quotes = new Array; quotes.push(""An artist\'s job is to take a snapshot--be it through words or sound, lyric or song--that explains what it\'s like to be alive at that time."

Cyndi Lauper"); quotes.push(""The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a birdcage played with a toasting-fork."

Sir Thomas Beecham"); quotes.push(""A scratch with a sound at the end of it."

Definition of a harpsichord quoted by Percy A. Scholes"); quotes.push(""Haydn had neither the flashy individuality of Mozart nor the brooding, romantic passion of Beethoven. He was more of a middle-management type."

David W. Barber"); quotes.push(""To listen is an effort; just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""I\'ve never had a humble opinion. If you\'ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?"

Joan Baez"); quotes.push(""If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

Thomas Edison"); quotes.push(""Just because something doesn\'t do what you planned it to do doesn\'t mean it\'s useless."

Thomas Edison"); quotes.push(""Many of life\'s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

Thomas Edison"); quotes.push(""It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed new ways of thinking and approaching something. It made me an infinitely richer person, and I think a better musician."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""When I sing, I don\'t want them to see that my face is black. I don\'t want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless."

Marian Anderson"); quotes.push(""When you stop having dreams and ideals - well, you might as well stop altogether."

Marian Anderson"); quotes.push(""Everything I\'ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre."

Chet Atkins"); quotes.push(""Actually, I feel music becoming more and more important. It\'s a big source of inspiration. With what\'s going on in the world, we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace."

Cecilia Bartoli"); quotes.push(""I still love to walk in the mountains or be on the sea. I like to be in nature. Sometimes I bicycle. It\'s important to feel good with your body. The body is extremely important. If you feel good, you have more energy in your singing."

Cecilia Bartoli"); quotes.push(""The goal is always to make a nice tableau painting with the voice. The more color I can find, the more shadow I can find - the goal is always to make more nuance and colors."

Cecilia Bartoli"); quotes.push(""Do what you love. Love what you do. Take less. Give more. Never quit. Never follow. Be passionate. Be bold. Be honest. Respect people. Respect the environment. Always bring out the best in your family and friends. Change is the only constant. Fear is an illusion. Attitude is everything."

SONNIE TROTTER"); quotes.push(""Music is a way to dream together and go to another dimension."

Cecilia Bartoli"); quotes.push(""If you play a tune and a person don\'t tap their feet, don\'t play the tune."

Count Basie"); quotes.push(""A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour will stimulate a like humour in the listener."

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach"); quotes.push(""A musician\'s humor is the inevitable distillation of a capacity to listen to himself, honestly to take blame for his own mistakes and shortcomings, a freedom from prejudice and an ability to see himself in as unreal and ludicrous a light as others might see him, this extraterrestrial being--messenger, clown, seer, priest or demon--exposing and liberating us to ourselves in the deepest sense possible and without the accusatory embarrassment of words. For humor is a gift of the gods, born of deep humanity, of suffering and compassion."

Sir Yehudi Menuhin"); quotes.push(""He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."

Muhammad Ali"); quotes.push(""If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don\'t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that\'s what we do."

Karl Paulnack"); quotes.push(""When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity."

Wynonna Judd"); quotes.push(""If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music .... I get most joy in life out of music."

Albert Einstein"); quotes.push(""The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man."

Albert Einstein"); quotes.push(""I immediately feel vibrations that thrill my whole being. These are the Spirit illuminating the soul power within, and in this exalted state, I see clearly what is obscure in my ordinary moods. Then I feel capable of drawing inspiration from above, as Beethoven did ... Straitway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind\'s eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies and orchestration. Measure by measure, the finished product is revealed to me when I am in those rare, inspired moods."

Johannes Brahms"); quotes.push(""Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it."

Henry David Thoreau"); quotes.push(""Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words."

Robert G. Ingersoll"); quotes.push(""Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosphy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""With certain groups, like Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and now my own group, there is a level of playing which we try to reach which is the same thing that people do when they do transcendental meditation and yoga. They talk about "out of the body" experiences. That\'s what this music is. It\'s chanting; it\'s meditation; it\'s yoga. It\'s all these things. In order to play, something transcends. Something happens with the physical, the spiritual and the mental state in which they combine, and their energy is turned free. It\'s a cleansing experience which in a religion they would say, "It\'s of another world." The state I\'m talking about even transcends emotions. It\'s a feeling of being able to communicate with all living things."

Ronald Shannon Jackson"); quotes.push(""Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all."

Helmut Walcha"); quotes.push(""All anybody needs to know about prizes is that Mozart never won one."

Henry Mitchell"); quotes.push(""O great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives."

Jim Morrison"); quotes.push(""Folk music is the original melody of man, it is the musical mirror of the world."

Friedrich Nietzsche"); quotes.push(""When the music and dance create with accord their magic captivates both the heart and the mind."

Jean Georges Noverre"); quotes.push(""If it weren\'t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song."

Carl Perkins"); quotes.push(""I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us."

Martin Luther"); quotes.push(""Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything."

Plato"); quotes.push(""To sing well and to dance well is to be well-educated."

Plato"); quotes.push(""An artist\'s job is to take a snapshot--be it through words or sound, lyric or song--that explains what it\'s like to be alive at that time."

Cyndi Lauper"); quotes.push(""Music,to create harmony, must investigate discord."

Plutarch"); quotes.push(""Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes."

Bill Cosby"); quotes.push(""For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions."

Plato"); quotes.push(""Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs."

Friedrich Nietzsche"); quotes.push(""Don\'t play what\'s there, play what\'s not there."

Miles Davis"); quotes.push(""A song will outlive all sermons in the memory."

Henry Giles"); quotes.push(""Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings."

Edward Gardner"); quotes.push(""Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I\'d try a revolver first."

Josh Billings"); quotes.push(""The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven\'t seen the joke yet."

Oliver Herford"); quotes.push(""The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes."

Sir Thomas Beecham"); quotes.push(""There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument will play itself."

J.S. Bach"); quotes.push(""There is two kinds of music, the good and bad. I play the good kind."

Louis Armstrong"); quotes.push(""You don\'t need any brains to listen to music."

Luciano Pavarotti"); quotes.push(""Only the pure in heart can make a good soup."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""Talent works, genius creates."

Robert Schumann"); quotes.push(""Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war--for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I\'d say we deserve ours more."

John Lennon"); quotes.push(""There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we\'d all love one another."

Frank Zappa"); quotes.push(""All music is folk music. I ain\'t never heard no horse sing a song."

Louis Armstrong"); quotes.push(""Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes--ah, that is where the art resides."

Artur Schnabel"); quotes.push(""All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."

Frank Zappa"); quotes.push(""Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable on transmuting emotion into music."

Carlos Santana"); quotes.push(""Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible."

Ronnie Scott"); quotes.push(""Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

Voltaire"); quotes.push(""I think people overemphasize the importance of gear in their search for tone. Your sound comes from how you pick and dampen the strings, and from your attack as much as anything."

Eric Johnson"); quotes.push(""Music is an immediate art; it\'s always happening right now."

Sam Andrew"); quotes.push(""Bach gave us God\'s Word. Mozart gave us God\'s laughter. Beethoven gave us God\'s fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words."

Unknown; from an old opera house"); quotes.push(""Andres Segovia literally created the genre of classical guitar, which hadn\'t existed before around 1910. There was flamenco, which he borrowed from, but he actually arranged the works of Mozart and other classical composers for guitar, something that had never been done before ... Segovias\' style is not slick or contrived, but it\'s still very clean and his timing is impeccable ... it\'s got a feeling of casual elegance, as if he\'s sitting around the house in Spain with a jug of wine, just playing from the heart."

Roger McGuinn"); quotes.push(""The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No.""

Aaron Copland"); quotes.push(""I don\'t want you to play me a riff that\'s going to impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play."

Ozzy Osbourne"); quotes.push(""Music is an outburst of the soul."

Frederick Deluis"); quotes.push(""We are working in a field of mystical resonance, sound and vibration... that\'s what makes people cry, laugh and feel their hair stand up."

Carlos Santana"); quotes.push(""Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can\'t get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing."

Howard Roberts"); quotes.push(""Elvis Presleys\' first album ... had more energy and more enthusiam than any other album at the time; when it was released it just blew everything else out. It changed the whole landscape of music."

Brian Setzer"); quotes.push(""I don\'t know anything about music. In my line you don\'t have to."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together."

Anais Nin"); quotes.push(""In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain."

George Szell"); quotes.push(""Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

Red Auerbach"); quotes.push(""Country music is three chords and the truth."

Harlan Howar"); quotes.push(""Do what you love. Love what you do. Take less. Give more. Never quit. Never follow. Be passionate. Be bold. Be honest. Respect people. Respect the environment. Always bring out the best in your family and friends. Change is the only constant. Fear is an illusion. Attitude is everything."

SONNIE TROTTER"); quotes.push(""A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is found out."

Ernest Newman"); quotes.push(""Wagner\'s music is better than it sounds."

Mark Twain"); quotes.push(""I\'ve come up with the theory that the music is within. We don\'t bring it in; it\'s already there. We have to figure out how to get it out."

Howard Roberts"); quotes.push(""Give me a laundry list and I\'ll set it to music."

Antonio Rossini"); quotes.push(""Is it not strange that sheep\'s guts should hale souls out of men\'s bodies."

William Shakespeare"); quotes.push(""Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."

John Philip Sousa"); quotes.push(""A good composer does not imitate; he steals."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""Composers shouldn\'t think too much; it interferes with the plagiarism."

Howard Dietz"); quotes.push(""Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

Mark Twain"); quotes.push(""I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don\'t talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life."

Andrew Wyeth"); quotes.push(""Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body."

Oliver Wendell Holmes"); quotes.push(""If music be the food of love, play on."

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night"); quotes.push(""Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

John Keats"); quotes.push(""I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us."

Martin Luther"); quotes.push(""I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""My piano is to me like the frigate to the mariner, the horse to the Arab; more than that even!"

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""Sorrowful and great is the artist\'s destiny."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""The virtuoso is not a mason who, chisel in hand, faithfully and conscientiously whittles stone after the design of an architect. He is called upon to make emotion speak."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."

Frederic Chopin"); quotes.push(""Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind."

Johannes Brahms"); quotes.push(""The fact that people do not understand and respect the very best things, such as Mozart\'s concertos, is what permits men like us to become famous."

Johannes Brahms"); quotes.push(""It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table."

Johannes Brahms"); quotes.push(""Approach your guitar intelligently, and if there are limits, don\'t deny them. Work within your restrictions. Some things you can do better than others, some things you can\'t do as well. So accentuate the positive."

Chet Atkins"); quotes.push(""You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don\'t try."

Beverly Sills"); quotes.push(""Life can\'t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years."

William F. Buckley, Jr."); quotes.push(""Play the music, not the instrument."

Unknown"); quotes.push(""Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""Music is the shorthand of emotion."

Leo Tolstoy"); quotes.push(""There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music."

Robert Browning"); quotes.push(""Music is something I really have a need to do; I don\'t seem to be able to stop."

Jakob Dylan"); quotes.push(""The pause is as important as the note."

Truman Fisher"); quotes.push(""It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that\'s what it amounts to. I haven\'t found any shortcuts, and I\'ve been looking for a long time."

Chet Atkins"); quotes.push(""Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."

Confucius"); quotes.push(""Everybody has a different kind of talent and a different timetable as to when they develop."

Itzhak Perlman"); quotes.push(""It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit-enable them to see visions and dream dreams."

Eric Anderson"); quotes.push(""Every man\'s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."

Samuel Butler"); quotes.push(""Music is everybody\'s possession. It\'s only publishers who think that people own it."

John Lennon"); quotes.push(""Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted."

John Lennon"); quotes.push(""Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you\'ll just rattle your jewelry."

John Lennon"); quotes.push(""The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation\'s purpose and is a test of the quality of a nation\'s civilization."

John F. Kennedy"); quotes.push(""Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races and states who are strangers to one another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited and bring peace to what is hostile."

Dr. Max Bendiner"); quotes.push(""Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear."

Ralph Waldo Emerson"); quotes.push(""Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

Albert Einstein"); quotes.push(""For so long we plowed different furrows ... the greats ... be it of country, rhythm & blues, rock \'n\' roll. You know what they were doing? They were messing with your heart and soul. That\'s what it was. Nothing has the strength, the power of music."

Sam Phillips"); quotes.push(""Everything has a beginning somewhere and one thing leads to another, though they may not seem connected: from Bach to Baroque to Appalachian folk fiddling. Actually, those have some common elements.."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed new ways of thinking and approaching something. It made me an infinitely richer person, and I think a better musician."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world."

-"); quotes.push(""Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there\'s got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you\'re at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""Think of the drone and the way Bach uses pedal notes. They\'re all over classical music, and all over Celtic music, too.."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""When you strip away some of the innovations of the last 500 years and get into a pre-1600 playing mode, you can relate to other styles and instruments. I think I learned about that from playing Baroque cello, and folk music with Mark O\'Connor and Edgar Meyer."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""Music is like making love: either all or nothing."

Isaac Stern"); quotes.push(""There are more bad musicians than there is bad music."

Isaac Stern"); quotes.push(""Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule."

Samuel Butler"); quotes.push(""We have quite a large area, and that makes it more fun for us, certainly more satisfying, because it doesn\'t restrict us to one particular idea or one particular style. The result, I think, is pretty interesting ... we don\'t expect to make a fortune at it or ever be popular or famous or worshipped or hit "The Ed Sullivan Show " or the circuses or the big top. As long as we can play, we\'ll play, regardless of what it\'s for, who it\'s for or anything. It\'s fun for us -- that\'s the important thing."

Jerry Garcia"); quotes.push(""There\'s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don\'t know what it is, but I\'ve got it."

Ron Wood"); quotes.push(""Everyone has their own sound, and if you\'re heard enough, folks will come to recognize it. Style however, is a different thing. Try to express your own ideas. It\'s much more difficult to do, but the rewards are there if you\'re good enough to pull it off."

Chet Atkins"); quotes.push(""The effects of good music are not just because it\'s new; on the contrary, music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe"); quotes.push(""Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don\'t take it too seriously."

Henry Mille"); quotes.push(""If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards."

Joe Pass"); quotes.push(""Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music."

Isaac Stern"); quotes.push(""If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don\'t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that\'s what we do."

Karl Paulnack"); quotes.push(""Music is the art of thinking with sounds."

Jules Combarieu"); quotes.push(""When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices."

Andres Segovia"); quotes.push(""Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy ... that was a great rare gift he gave me: believe in myself, right from the start of my recording career... if there hadn\'t been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field."

Johnny Cash"); quotes.push(""I\'ve come up with the theory that the music is within. We don\'t bring it in; it\'s already there. We have to figure out how to get it out."

Howard Roberts"); quotes.push(""I played "Eruption" two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow. There\'s a mistake at the top end of it; whenever I hear it, I always think, Man I could\'ve played it better ... but I like the way it sounds. I\'d never heard a guitar sound like that before."

Henry Mille"); quotes.push(""I feel a great responsibility to deliver for our audience ... I am like their servant, but there\'s only one honest way to lift people up, which is to feel genuinely elevated yourself. And the way to do that is follow your heart. That\'s all we try to do."

Trey Anastasio"); quotes.push(""Although one can get very clever at home, progress comes a lot quicker if you step into a room with other people and start playing."

Steve Howe"); quotes.push(""Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don\'t listen, and if one plays bad music people don\'t talk."

Oscar Wilde"); quotes.push(""Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory."

Oscar Wilde"); quotes.push(""I think music in itself is healing. It\'s an explosive expression of humanity. It\'s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we\'re from, everyone loves music."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""An intellectual is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger."

John Chesson"); quotes.push(""My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music."

Kenny Burrell"); quotes.push(""Americans\' true music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today."

George Gershwin"); quotes.push(""There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn\'t give a damn what goes on in between."

Sir Thomas Beecham"); quotes.push(""Music is the vernacular of the human soul."

Geoffrey Latham"); quotes.push(""If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing."

Zimbabwe proverb"); quotes.push(""I am a general. My soldiers are the keys and I have to command them."

Vladimir Horowitz"); quotes.push(""I must tell you I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake you hear it. If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake. Never be afraid to dare."

Vladimir Horowitz"); quotes.push(""We weren\'t very professional; she could have gone to almost any town and put together a smoother ensemble, but we were pioneers, and professional musicians probably wouldn\'t have come up with what we did. Professional musicians probably wouldn\'t have given Janis Joplin the space to be herself, which was probably our greatest gift to her."

Sam Andrew"); quotes.push(""If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn\'t have to go to an osteopath, then there\'s something wrong."

Simon Rattle"); quotes.push(""The guitar is a means of expressing music. When you get into the emotional side of it, then it\'s not the guitar that matters so much as the music itself. But the guitar is the vehicle I use. It\'s how I express myself. As for the emotional side, music takes up where language leaves off. To try and verbalize what music says, emotionally and spiritually, is futile. Let me put it this way, Louis Armstrong once said if you\'ve got to ask, you\'ll never know."

Charlie Byrd"); quotes.push(""The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet."

Jeffrey Tate"); quotes.push(""Music isn\'t just learning notes and playing them, You learn notes to play to the music of your soul."

Katie Greenwood"); quotes.push(""Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean, Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea; and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both."

Henri Frederic Amiel"); quotes.push(""Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

Noel Coward"); quotes.push(""There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music."

George Eliot"); quotes.push(""Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind."

Hal A. Lingerman"); quotes.push(""My daughter McKenna thought I sang with the Everly Brothers. I said, "No I was one of the Righteous Brothers" and she said "Didn\'t they invent the airplane?.""

Bill Medley"); quotes.push(""People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet."

Witold Lutoslawski"); quotes.push(""Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."

Truman Capote"); quotes.push(""The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, "Thus far and no farther.""

Ludwig van Beethoven"); quotes.push(""I pay no attention whatever to anybody\'s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"); quotes.push(""Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"); quotes.push(""Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"); quotes.push(""If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place."

Robert Schumann"); quotes.push(""Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm."

Robert Schumann"); quotes.push(""Art is a fine gift! What, indeed, is finer than to clothe one\'s feelings in music, what a comfort in time of trouble, what a pleasure, what an exquisite feeling to give happy hours to so many people!"

Clara Schumann"); quotes.push(""When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love."

Franz Schubert"); quotes.push(""For me, Schubert contains the world."

Janet Baker"); quotes.push(""The reason why Schubert is celebrated so much today lies rather in the fact that there has been nobody else like him - not before him, not after him."

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau"); quotes.push(""Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote."

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau"); quotes.push(""As a pianist, I was always lucky. You cannot realize what it means to me to leave the piano. It is like a day of sorrow."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""I can truly say that my mass has been more prayed than composed."

Franz Liszt"); quotes.push(""You can\'t cheat in mathematics or poetry or music because they\'re based on truth."

John Steinbeck"); quotes.push(""I can\t sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am."

Artemus (Charles Farrar Browne) Ward"); quotes.push(""We all have ability. The difference is how we use it."

Stevie (Steveland Judkins) Wonder"); quotes.push(""We are all more capable than we think we are."

Anne Murray"); quotes.push(""Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end."

Emanuel Ax"); quotes.push(""Pianists don\'t argue too much generally because we have such a hard time just getting things right; arguing is for string players."

Emanuel Ax"); quotes.push(""Sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end."

Emanuel Ax"); quotes.push(""Don\'t make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it\'s crucial to make a living, that shouldn\'t be your inspiration. Do it for yourself."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""For whatever reason, not all people are born with the particular gift of being able to express ourselves through music. And, believe me, it is a gift."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?"

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm--walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new, and that is ultimately good for the artist."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""I did write a letter to the archdiocese who\'d banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""I think music in itself is healing. It\'s an explosive expression of humanity. It\'s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we\'re from, everyone loves music."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""Those who have expressed doubts and misgivings about their ability to live this kind of life shouldn\'t try, because being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""Why do musicians give so much time to charitable causes? The most humanitarian cause that we can give our time to is the creation and performance of music itself."

Billy Joel"); quotes.push(""A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It\'s my favorite part of the business, live concerts."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I\'m singing now is what makes the money."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""I\'ll never make it, it will never happen, because they\'re never going to hear me \'cause they\'re screaming all the time."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""Rhythm is something you either have or don\'t have, but when you have it, you have it all over."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I\'m doin\' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them."

Elvis Presley"); quotes.push(""Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary."

Anton Rubenstein"); quotes.push(""I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand."

Clara Schumann"); quotes.push(""There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it."

Clara Schumann"); quotes.push(""I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin\' like myself."

Hank Williams"); quotes.push(""Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece."

Nadia Boulanger"); quotes.push(""Art is the signature of civilizations."

Beverly Sills"); quotes.push(""There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

Beverly Sills"); quotes.push(""I was born and trained to communicate music, just as the sons were born and trained to hunt, and I was lucky to have grown up in Hungary, a country that lives and breathes music, that has a passionate belief in the power of music as a celebration of life."

Georg Solti"); quotes.push(""Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning."

Frederic Chopin"); quotes.push(""I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing."

Bela Bartok"); quotes.push(""A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn\'t."

Anonymous"); quotes.push(""Consort not with a female musician lest thou be taken in by her snares."

Ben Sira, The Book of Wisdom, ca 190 BC"); quotes.push(""Just don\'t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don\'t think you can go wrong."

Ella Fitzgerald"); quotes.push(""The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish."

Virgil Thompson"); quotes.push(""Music, theoretically considered, consists altogether of lines of tone. It more nearly resembles a picture or an architectural drawing, than any other art creation; the difference being that in a drawing the lines are visible and constant, while in music they are audible and in motion. The separate tones are the points through which the lines are drawn; and the impression which is intended, and which is apprehended by the intelligent listener, is not that of single tones, but of continuous lines of tones, describing movements, curves and angles, rising, falling, poising--directly analogous to the linear impressions conveyed by a picture or drawing."

Percy Geotschius"); quotes.push(""Art distils sensation and embodies it with meaning in memorable form--or else it is not art."

Jacques Barzun"); quotes.push(""All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."

Walter Pater"); quotes.push(""Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working 24 hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force."

Irving Berlin"); quotes.push(""That reminds me, I\'m playing a concert tonight."

Fritz Kreisler, on seeing a row of fish at the market"); quotes.push(""There\'s no reason we can\'t be friends. We both play Bach. You in your way, I in his."

Wanda Landowska"); quotes.push(""Dear Mr. Edison: For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening\'s experiement. Astonished at the wonderful form you have developed and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever."

Sir Arthur Sullivan to Thomas Edison"); quotes.push(""I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."

Jascha Heifetz"); quotes.push(""It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf."

H.L. Mencken"); quotes.push(""Last night the band played Beethoven. Beethoven lost."

Anonymous"); quotes.push(""Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently."

James Gibbons Huneker"); quotes.push(""I played more or less as a bird sings, instinctively, uncalculatingly, unthinkingly."

Sir Yehudi Menuhin"); quotes.push(""Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B-minor Mass?"

Michael Torke"); quotes.push(""Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a short glance to give them an important cue. But never let the horns and woodwind out of your sight; if you can hear them at all they are still too strong."

Richard Strauss"); quotes.push(""Madame, there you sit with that magnificent instrument between your legs, and all you can do is scratch it!"

Arturo Toscanini"); quotes.push(""Music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provike to harm."

William Shakespeare"); quotes.push(""As some do church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there."

Alexander Pope"); quotes.push(""Classical music is music written by famous dead foreigners."

Arlene Heath"); quotes.push(""Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune."

"Kin" Frank Hubbard McKinny"); quotes.push(""The main thing the public demands of a composer is that he be dead."

Arthur Honneger, French composer (when he was still alive)"); quotes.push(""When I was young, people used to say to me: Wait until you\'re 50, you\'ll see. I am 50. I haven\'t seen anything."

Erik Satie"); quotes.push(""In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of."

Robert Schumann"); quotes.push(""Never compose anything unless not composing it becomes a positive nuisance to you."

Gustav Holst"); quotes.push(""I\'ve been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that\'s a job where I don\'t think sex plays much part."

Nadia Boulanger"); quotes.push(""They are for prima donnas or corpses; I am neither."

Arturo Toscanini, refusing flowers after a concert"); quotes.push(""Can\'t you read? The score demands con amore, and what are you doing? You are playing it like married men!"

Arturo Toscanini"); quotes.push(""We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again."

Sir Thomas Beecham, to a soloist during rehearsal"); quotes.push(""It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page."

Joan Baez"); quotes.push(""Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird; that\'s easy. What\'s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that\'s creativity."

Charles Mingus"); quotes.push(""That\'s when the creativity starts to dry up, when you take yourself too seriously. You\'re not natural, and you\'re not free. When it\'s just natural and joyous, it turns you on properly"

Robert "3D" Del Naja"); quotes.push(""I think when you sign on to anything in life truly--whether it be a writer or a musician or any job--you kind of do go to a crossroads situation where you either take it seriously and take it to the extreme or you don\'t. I did that a few years ago. That entails melodies haunting you, not being able to sleep properly. You know what I mean? It\'s like you see an athlete at the top; they have to sacrifice something, and I think a musician has to sacrifice quite a big chunk of his mind."

"Mad Richard" Ashcroft"); quotes.push(""A statue has never been set up in honor of a critic."

Jean Sibelius"); quotes.push(""A critic is a man who knows the way but can\'t drive the car."

Kenneth Tynan"); quotes.push(""Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They\'re there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can\'t do it themselves."

Brendan Behan"); quotes.push(""A critic is a legless man who teaches running."

Channing Pollock"); quotes.push(""I cried all the way to the bank."

Vladzin Valentino Liberace, on his reaction to criticism"); quotes.push(""You know, the critics never change; I\'m still getting the same notices I used to get as a child. They tell me I play very well for my age."

Mischa (Mikail) Elman"); quotes.push(""Critics can\'t even make music by rubbing their back legs together."

Mel Brooks"); quotes.push(""I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""The trouble with music critics is that so often they have the score in their hands and not in their heads."

Sir Thomas Beecham"); quotes.push(""[The critic] is forced to be literate about the illiterate, witty about the witless and coherent about the incoherent."

John Crosby"); quotes.push(""Last year, I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality in Animals". Today, I shall speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality in Critics". The subject is very similar."

Erik Satie"); quotes.push(""I found myself referring to the programme to find out whether I ought to be seeing red or looking blue at certain moments, and some of it made many of the audience feel green"

The London Times, reviewing A Colour Symphony"); quotes.push(""A critic is a bunch of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste."

Witney Balliett"); quotes.push(""Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger."

Franklin P. Jones"); quotes.push(""I don\'t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

"Bing" (Harry Lillis) Crosby"); quotes.push(""Music is a form of energy that activates our sense of community."

Yo-Yo Ma, Jan 2008 NPR Interview"); quotes.push(""As long as I keep learning--and there is so much to learn in music--I\'m living."

Marcia Tollefson, May 10, 2008 Washington Post"); quotes.push(""Without music, life is a journey through a desert."

Pat Conroy"); quotes.push(""Do not fear mistakes, there are none."

Miles Davis"); quotes.push(""The high note is not the only thing."

Placido Domingo"); quotes.push(""You are the music while the music lasts."

T.S. Eliot"); quotes.push(""Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one."

Duke Ellington"); quotes.push(""Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best."

Henry Van Dyke"); quotes.push(""I know only two tunes; one of them is "Yankee Doodle," and the other isn\'t."

Ulysess S. Grant"); quotes.push(""A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges."

Benny Green"); quotes.push(""All the sounds of the earth are like music."

Oscar Hammerstein"); quotes.push(""Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."

E.Y. Harbug"); quotes.push(""People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least while the music lasts."

Paul Hindemith"); quotes.push(""To love beauty is to see light."

Victor Hugo"); quotes.push(""Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

Victor Hugo"); quotes.push(""I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality."

H.A. Overstreet"); quotes.push(""Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work, or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios of Italy were bald at 30."

Gioacchino Rossini"); quotes.push(""After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible, is music."

Aldous Huxley"); quotes.push(""The history of a people is found in its songs."

George Jellinek"); quotes.push(""We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you\'re doing so."

B.B. King"); quotes.push(""I think he [Yo-Yo Ma] is an example of why we all need to get out of the niche, if we\'re able to. I\'m somebody who\'s incredibly boring and just does the same thing all the time as well as I possibly can. It\'s people like him who lead the rest of us to the thought that music is music; it\'s not \'classical\' or \'pop.\'"

Emanual Ax"); quotes.push(""We\'re taught to hold two different things in our head at the same time. You have to have the biggest picture, whatever that is: the era, or the vibes, or the universe or whatever, you know. And then you have to focus on the infinitesimal detail of the moment."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""I may think something\'s important, but until you think it\'s important, it doesn\'t really matter what I do. I\'ve got to know who you are."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""[Music] is powered by ideas. And to understand that is huge, because then the ideas can galvanize people together, as opposed to . . . \'I have a better vibrato than you\'."

Yo-Yo Ma"); quotes.push(""Music rearranges your molecular structure."

Carlos Santana"); quotes.push(""Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies."

George Santayana"); quotes.push(""To send light into the darkness of men\'s hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

Robert Schumann"); quotes.push(""There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."

Albert Schweitzer"); quotes.push(""Music goes deeper than emotion into the energies that animate our psychic life."

Roger Sessions"); quotes.push(""A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence."

Stokowski"); quotes.push(""Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don\'t live it, it won\'t come out of your horn. They teach you there\'s a boundary line to music. But, man, there\'s no boundary line to art."

Charlie "YardBird" Parker"); quotes.push(""Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best."

Henry Van Dyke"); quotes.push(""Where words fail, music speaks."

Hans Christian Andersen"); quotes.push(""Music was my refuge, I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

Maya Angelou"); quotes.push(""Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us."

Anonymous"); quotes.push(""What we play is life."

Louis Armstrong"); quotes.push(""I believe that interpretation should be like a transparent glass, a window for the composer\'s music."

Vladimir Ashkenazy"); quotes.push(""There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it."

M. Aumonier"); quotes.push(""A nation creates music; the composer only arranges it."

Bela Bartok"); quotes.push(""If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other."

Jose Bergamin"); quotes.push(""Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."

Leonard Bernstein"); quotes.push(""Study Bach. There you will find everything."

Johannes Brahms"); quotes.push(""Composing is like driving down a foggy road..."

Benjamin Britten"); quotes.push(""Although one can get very clever at home, progress comes a lot quicker if you step into a room with other people and start playing."

Steve Howe"); quotes.push(""A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks, music is with us from the beginning."

Pamela Brown"); quotes.push(""Music to me is like breathing. I don\'t get tired of breathing; I don\'t get tired of music."

Ray Charles"); quotes.push(""Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar, except, possibly, two."

Frederic Chopin"); quotes.push(""Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music."

Confucius"); quotes.push(""Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best."

Henry Van Dyke"); quotes.push(""Although one can get very clever at home, progress comes a lot quicker if you step into a room with other people and start playing."

Steve Howe"); quotes.push(""Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one\'s nerves - which is the same thing nowadays."

Oscar Wilde"); quotes.push(""If it sounds good, it is good."

Duke Ellington"); quotes.push(""What is best in music is not to be found in the notes."

Gustav Mahler"); quotes.push(""When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."

Thoreau"); quotes.push(""Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord."

Plutarch (ca 45-125)"); quotes.push(""We\'re working with dynamics now. We\'ve spent two years with loud, and we\'ve spent six months with deafening."

Jerry Garcia"); quotes.push(""Perhaps it was because Nero played the fiddle, they burned Rome."

Oliver Herford"); quotes.push(""Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody\'s piano playing in my living room has to the book I\m reading."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""A [film] musician is like a mortician. He can\t bring a body to life, but he can make it look better."

Adolf Deutsch"); quotes.push(""Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts--as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare."

Herbert Spencer"); quotes.push(""Of all the musicians, flautists are most obviously the ones who know something we don\'t know."

Paul Jennings"); quotes.push(""The only thing to do with a folk melody, once you have played it, is to play it louder."

Anonymous"); quotes.push(""You have to admire people who sing [a protest song]. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffeehouse or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good. I have a song here which I realize should be accompanied on a folk instrument--in which category the piano does not, alas, qualify. So imagine, if you will, that I am playing an 88-string guitar."

Tom Lehrer"); quotes.push(""A folksinger is someone who sings through his nose by ear."

Anonymous"); quotes.push(""To the average Briton the fugue is still an acute phase of a disease of dullness which occasionally breaks out in drawing rooms, and is known there as classical music."

George Bernard Shaw"); quotes.push(""Learn thoroughly how to compose a fugue, and then don\t."

George Bernard Shaw"); quotes.push(""As any musician will tell you, there is only one thing to do when you wake at five, and that is to compose a fugue. ...God knows why I am writing fugues. It is certainly not to waken the sleeping soul of Bach. Fugue is something that gets into you and, when one has composed forty-eight of the bastards, flies, or fugues, out again."

Anthony Burgess"); quotes.push(""God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way!"

Arturo Toscanini (reprimanding a trumpet player)"); quotes.push(""This music of yours--a manifestation of the highest energy, not at all abstract, but without an object, energy in a void, in pure ether. Where else in the universe does such a thing appear? We Germans have taken over from philosophy the expression \'in itself,\' we use it every day without much idea of the metaphysical. But here you have it; such music is energy itself, yet not as idea, rather in its actuality. I call your attention to the fact that is almost the definition of God,Imitatio Dei. I am surprised it is not forbidden."

Thomas Mann"); quotes.push(""I look at you all,
See the love there that\'s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps."

George Harrison"); quotes.push(""Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune."

Igor Stravinsky"); quotes.push(""Two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof."

Sir Thomas Beecham (in reference to the harpsichord)"); document.write(quotes[(Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length))]);